Alternative endings

[mingdamerciless]

Hi everyone, this is my first post, so here goes.
I think Tess is a wonderfull and beautiful novel and i was allowed to choose a novel to write my literature coursework on, so guess what i chose tess. Its going well so far, but i was wondering if anyone knew if there were any alternative endings that had been written either by Hardy or another author. I think i heard somewhere that when he wasnt allowed to publish tess with the current ending because it was so scandalous he wrote an alternative one, but changed it back again. It would be amazing if anyone could confirm this and give be an idea of how to get hold of the other ending. Hope you can help. Thankeee kindly. Byeee

[mingdamerciless]

hey hey hey me again, just in case anyone's interested i found out that it wasn't actually an alternative ending but an alternative, ummm, middle bit. apparently Alec tricks Tess into marrying him, not quite sure how he managed that but eh well, nd ummm yeer things went frm bad to worse, certaintly prefer the usual plot though, may be interesting to read though, haven't been able to find it still . . .

[Luna1968]

Hardy, in an interview in the Norton Critical Edition of the novel, says, "One old gentelman of eighty impolored me to reconcile Tess and Angel. But I could not. They would never have likved happily. Angel was far too fastidious and particular. He would inevitably have thrown her fall in her face. But indeed I had little or nothing to do with it. When I got to the middle of the story the characters took their fates into their own hands, and I literally had no power."
I love this quote. It makes me feel better about such a sad ending.

[liverpool1939]

bump!