 Though now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel and possibly Hardy's fictional masterpiece, "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England.The novel is set in impoverished rural England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, during the Long Depression of the 1870s.Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated peasants.