A Group of Noble Dames

by Thomas Hardy

"A Group of Noble Dames" by Thomas Hardy is a collection of short stories published in 1891. Ten members of a club gather to share tales of aristocratic women from the 17th and 18th centuries. Each storyteller—from a local historian to a surgeon to a churchwarden—reveals the dramatic lives and fates of these noble ladies. Framed as an evening's entertainment, the collection blends romance, tragedy, and the complexities of upper-class society across two centuries of English history.