How many years did this span?

any advance on four and a bit years?

I think it's about 4-5 years.

Hardy's novel spans roughly six years.

Tess is sixteen at the very start of the novel when Angel visits Marlott with his brothers and dances with the village girls. She's twenty in the summer at Talbothays and roughly twenty-one at the end of that year when she and Angel marry. A year later she travels to Emminster and loses her boots. Angel returns from Brazil in the following spring, and they're on the run during the month of May.