Life's Little Ironies A Set of Tales, with Some Colloquial Sketches, Entitled, a Few Crusted Characters

Life's Little Ironies A Set of Tales, with Some Colloquial Sketches, Entitled, a Few Crusted Characters by Thomas Hardy collects short fiction about accident, irony, and the mismatch between intention and outcome. The stories often begin in everyday rural or small-town settings and then reveal ordinary plans twisting into disappointment.

Hardy's eye is sharpest when he shows social routine, marriage, work, and local feeling trapping people in outcomes they never foresaw. The colloquial sketches add texture and voice, but the deeper pattern is the same: chance keeps interrupting human confidence. Each piece ends with that uneasy sense that life has outmaneuvered the people living it. Hardy keeps each tale grounded in ordinary places before irony arrives.