Poor farmer Durbeyfield has been told by the village parson that he has noble relatives: the D'Urbervilles. His wife decides to send their daughter Tess to them in order to make a claim on their family's ancestral home in Wessex. Alec D'Urberville, the son of the squire, rapes Tess and she is pregnant - and becomes a “ruined” woman. Banned because is challenged sexual double standards of the time. Considered Thomas Hardy’s greatest novel.