It spans forty years, and follows Jocelyn Pierston, a celebrated sculptor who attempts to create in stone the image of his ideal woman, while he tries also to find her in the flesh.

He returns to the Isle of Slingers after hearing of the death of Avice, where he encounters her daughter, Ann, working as a launderess.

He receives word of Isaac Pierston's death, and returns to the island to ask her to marry him; however, upon seeing her daughter (the granddaughter of the original Avice Caro) he falls in love with her, believing that the 'Well-Beloved' has incarnated within her.

It was first published in three-part serial form in 1892, and then revised and re-published as a book in 1897, after Hardy's last novel Jude the Obscure (1895).

[2] The novel tells the story of the sculptor Jocelyn Pierston's search for the ideal woman, through three generations of a Portland family.

It is Pierston's inability to settle in a relationship with any individual member of the Caro family that makes him a transient figure 'outside' of time.

His refusal to participate in the "cycle of generations" implied by the geological history of the stones makes him a disruptive, temporarily disturbed presence.