The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament

by Thomas Hardy

"The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament" by Thomas Hardy is a novel serialized in 1892 and published as a book in 1897. It follows Jocelyn Pierston, a celebrated sculptor who searches obsessively for his ideal woman—the "Well-Beloved"—across forty years and three generations of the same family. As he pursues this elusive vision of perfect feminine beauty, shifting his affections from grandmother to daughter to granddaughter, Pierston becomes trapped outside time, unable to settle into the natural cycle of life and love.