"I am an outsider to the end of my days!" Jude Fawley's dream of a university education is shattered when he becomes trapped in a marriage with the earthy Arabella, who later abandons him. After moving to the city of Christminster and finding work as a stonemason, he meets his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, free-thinking "New Woman." Refusing to marry solely out of religious convention, Jude and Sue decide to live together. However, they are ostracized by society, and poverty threatens to destroy them. Jude the Obscure, Hardy's final novel, caused a sensation upon publication with its bold and provocative exploration of class and sexual relations. This edition uses the unexpurgated text of the 1895 first-volume edition and also includes a list of further reading, appendices, and a glossary. In his introduction, Dennis Taylor examines biblical references and the critique of religion in Jude the Obscure, as well as the critical reception that led Hardy to stop writing novels.