Description: The tale of an opportunistic yet ultimately loyal adventuress who begins life humbly and ends as the wife of a rakish aristocrat, The Hand of Ethelberta is a book that will surprise readers of Hardy's more familiar, and darker, Wessex novels. A conscious parody of the popular romances of the period, Hardy combines elements of domestic melodrama, earnest bildungsroman, ludicrous Restoration comedy, Gothic intrigues, and drawing-room farce with calculated irreverence for literary form. As Tim Dolin writes in his Introduction, Ethelberta "lives out a racier version of the Cinderella story in which the scullery-maid abandons the prince for the more glamorous role of fairy-godmother".

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