Turk seize it all

That's just an expression of exasperation, a mild invective. I've never seen it before, but that's because I'm not familiar with the dialect. Or maybe the author was coining a new phrase. It would be something like, "Damn it all, why...?" Or a milder version of, "God damn it all,..."

Thank you so much, FMB! You've cleared up my question.

Thomas Hardy; the extract is from "Under The Greenwood Tree" (1872).


Rural "Wessex"/Southern English (187os). Since the fictional Mellstock is modelled on Hardy's actual birthplace, Stinsford in Dorset, we may possibly assume both that the dialect can be localised to there, and that is is accurate.

Thanks for the info.

The novel in question is frequently used as a set book in English literature courses; I suspect this is the present case. The OP will find many web resources including this one

http://pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmGreenwood02.asp

I never much cared for Hardy's romance novels. I tried to read that one, but couldn't get through it.

I had to study Tess for an exam, it quite put me off Hardy. For Victorian reading pleasure I turn to Trollope, Dickens, and even Wells (and, yes, Kipling) before Hardy.

Trollope bores me to tears. Harcy's "serious" fiction is worth the effort--Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Return of the Native are good examples. But his "gothics," as romance novels then were know, were more successful in his lifetime. Tess is an example of a failed attempt on his part to blend "serious" fiction with the gothic. I could not read Greenwood, and although it had been many years, i should have known better when i recently attempted to read Desperate Measures and Two on a Tower. It is a common problem that writers are hailed in their own times for works which bore us today--cultures change, which means that literary tastes do, too. Dickens was brilliant in almost everything he wrote--but most students react as though it were a burden to read his works. Not everyone can write like Émile Zola, who was, in my never humble opinion, one of history's truly transcendent writers.

I once watched a travel programme on French TV, which showed things to do when visiting various European capitals. For London they chose a Charles Dickens tour. Dickens, the commentator helpfully told the téléspectateurs, was "le Victor Hugo anglais".

That's cute.