(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)<br><br>Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and its unflinching fatalism, <b>Jude the Obscure</b> aroused such a storm of controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly in response, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writing altogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though we have come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuing century, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power to shock us and disturb our dreams.