The Trumpet-Major 1880
A Laodicean 1881
Two on a Tower 1882
The Mayor of Casterbridge 1886
The Woodlanders 1887
Wessex Tales 1888
A Group of Noble Dames 1891
Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1891
Life’s Little Ironies 1894
Jude the Obscure 1895
The Well-Beloved 1897
A Changed Man and Other Tales 1913
The novels have been published in innumerable editions. The old Macmillan pocket editions can be picked up in second-hand bookshops and are usefully small and light enough to go in a pocket or handbag. The Penguin Classics series, which prints from the first editions, annotated and with introductions, is excellent.
Poetry
Wessex Poems and Other Verses 1898
Poems of the Past and the Present 1901
The Dynasts. Part I 1904. Part II 1906. Part III 1908
Time’s Laughingstocks and Other Verses 1909
Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries 1914
Selected Poems 1916
Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses 1917
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses 1922
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall 1923
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles 1925
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres 1928
Chosen Poems 1929
The poetry, which was initially published in eight separate collections, also exists in many different editions and selections, including two made by Hardy himself: the Selected Poems of 1916 and the larger Chosen Poems, which he prepared shortly before his death and which was published in 1929. There are two variorum editions: one, edited by James Gibson, is a large single volume that appeared in 1978; the other, by Samuel Hynes, is in five volumes (1982–95) and includes The Dynasts and The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall.
Biographical
What was published as Florence Hardy’s two-volume life of Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy (1928) and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (1930), is most conveniently read now in Michael Millgate’s one-volume, annotated The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy by Thomas Hardy (1984).
The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, eds. Michael Millgate and R.L. Purdy. 7 vols. 1978–88
One Rare Fair Woman: Thomas Hardy’s Letters to Florence Henniker, eds. Evelyn Hardy and F.B. Pinion 1972
The Architectural Notebook of Thomas Hardy, facsimile with Introduction by C.J.P. Beatty 1966
The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, ed. Richard H. Taylor 1978
Excluded and Collaborative Stories, ed. Pamela Dalziel 1992
Studies and Specimens Notebook of Thomas Hardy, eds. Michael Millgate and Pamela Dalziel 1994
Thomas Hardy’s Public Voice, ed. Michael Millgate 2001
Thomas Hardy’s ‘Facts’ Notebook, ed. William Greenslade 2004
TOPOGRAPHY AND BACKGROUND
Criswick, James, Walks round Dorchester 1820
Draper, Jo, Regency, Riot and Reform 2000 (Discover Dorset series)
Freeman, Michael, Railways and the Victorian Imagination 1999
Hurst, Alan, Hardy: An Illustrated Dictionary 1980
Jefferies, Richard, Hodge and His Masters 1880
—Amaryllis at the Fair 1887
Kerr, Barbara, Bound to the Soil: A Social History of Dorset 1968
Kilvert, Francis, Diaries. 3 vols. William Plomer ed. 1971
Lea, Hermann, Thomas Hardy’s Wessex 1969
Lee, C. E., Passenger Class Distinctions 1946
Mitford, Mary, Our Village [no date but first pub. 1832]
Oakley, Mike, Railway Stations 2001 (Discover Dorset series)
O’Sullivan, Timothy, Thomas Hardy: An Illustrated Biography 1975
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and Newman, John, Dorset 1972 (The Buildings of England series)
Pitt-Rivers, Michael, Dorset 1966
Savage, James, Dorchester and Its Environs 1832
Wolmar, Christian, The Subterranean Railway 2004
BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL
Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy (a selection), ed. Michael Millgate 1996
Thomas Hardy: Interviews and Recollections, ed. James Gibson 1999
Hardyana, collected by James Stevens Cox 1966
Hardyana [2], a further collection by James Stevens Cox 1967–71
Collins, Vere H., Talks with Thomas Hardy at Max Gate 1920–1922 1971 (first pub. 1928)
Felkin, Elliott, ‘Days with Thomas Hardy: From a 1918–19 Diary’, Encounter, 18 Apr. 1962
Gatrell, Simon, Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography 1988
—Thomas Hardy’s Vision of Wessex 2003
Gibson, James, Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life 1996
Gittings, Robert, The Young Thomas Hardy 1975
—The Older Hardy 1978
—The Second Mrs Hardy 1979
Hands, Timothy, A Hardy Chronology 1992
Hardy, Emma, Some Recollections, eds. Evelyn Hardy and Robert Gittings 1961
Hedgcock, Frank, Thomas Hardy: Penseur et Artiste 1911
Kay-Robinson, Denys, The First Mrs Thomas Hardy 1979
Millgate, Michael, Thomas Hardy: A Biography 1982
—Testamentary Acts 1992
—Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited 2004
Purdy, R.L., Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study 1954
Rabiger, Michael, ‘The Hoffman Papers Discovered’, Thomas Hardy Yearbook, No. 10
Seymour-Smith, Martin, Hardy 1994
Sutherland, John, ‘Hardy and His Publishers’ in Victorian Novelists and Publishers 1976
Weber, Carl, Thomas Hardy and the Lady from Madison Square 1952
FAMILY AND DORSET
Barclay, Celia, Nathaniel Sparks: Memoirs of Thomas Hardy’s Cousin the Engraver 1994
Barnes, William, Selected Poems of William Barnes, ed. Andrew Motion 1994
—William Barnes the Dorset Poet, introduced and selected by Chris Wrigley 1984
Barter, Charles H.S., Melbury Osmond: The Parish and Its People 1996
Conybeare, Clare, Short History of The King’s House, Salisbury 1987
Ginever, Edwin D., History of Maiden Newton 1965
Harford, J.B., Biography of Bishop Moule 1922
Moule, H. and H. Fordington Times Society 1859
Moule, H.C.G., Memories of a Vicarage 1913
Moule, Henry, Scraps of Sacred Verse 1846
—Eight Letters to Prince Albert 1855
Moule, Horace Mosley, Roman Republic 1860
Moule, Mary, The Memory of the Just is Blessed: A Brief Memorial of Mrs Moule of Fordington 1877
Murray, Amelia Matilda, Recollections 1868
Murray, Revd Edward, Prayers and Collects 1825
—The Ethiopic Book of Enoch 1836
LONDON, EARLY NOVELS AND MARRIAGE
Arch, Joseph, The Life of Joseph Arch 1898
Briggs, Asa, Victorian People 1965
Davison, Mark, Hook Remembered Again 2003
Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Untried Years 1953
—The Middle Years 1963
Garnett, Henrietta, Anny: A Life of Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie 2004
Hardy, Emma, Diaries, ed. Richard H. Taylor 1985
Humphrey, A.W., Robert Applegarth 1913
Layard, George Somes, Mrs Lynn Linton: Her Life, Letters and Opinions 1901
Maitland, F.W., Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen 1906
Morgan, Charles, The House of Macmillan 1944
Paul, Charles Kegan, Memories 1899
Tinsley, William, The Random Recollections of an Old Publisher 1900
Return of the Native, facsimile manuscript, introduced by Simon Gatrell 1986
LATER YEARS
Cambridge Magazine, ed. C. K. Ogden 1912–20
Blunt, Wilfrid, Cockerell 1964
Clodd, Edward, Memoires 1916
Cockerell, Sydney, Friends of a Lifetime: Letters
to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, ed. Viola Meynell 1940
Dugdale, Florence, ‘The Apotheosis of the Minx’, Cornhill, June 1908
Fortescue, Winifred, There’s Rosemary… There’s Rue 1939
Garrett, Anderson, Hang Your Halo in the Hall: A History of the Savile Club 1993
Gifford, Henry, ‘Thomas Hardy and Emma’ in Essays and Studies 1966
Gissing, George, Letters of George Gissing to Edouard Bertz, ed. A.C. Young 1960
Hardy, Emma, Alleys, and Spaces (poems and religious effusions) 1966
Henniker, Florence, Outlines 1894
— In Scarlet and Grey 1896
— Contrasts 1903
Lhombreaud, Roger, Arthur Symons 1963
McCabe, Joseph, Edward Clodd: A Memoir 1932
Nevill, Dorothy, Reminiscences of Lady Nevill 1906
St Helier, Lady, Memories of Fifty Years 1909
Sutro, Alfred, Celebrities and Simple Souls 1933
Thwaite, Ann, Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape 1849–1928 1984
Wharton, Edith, A Backward Glance 1934
Woolf, Virginia, Diaries, Vol. III, ed. Anne Olivier Bell 1980
—Letters, Vol. III, ed. Nigel Nicolson 1977
CRITICISM
Lawrence, D.H., Essay on Thomas Hardy 1914 (unpublished until 1936, in Phoenix)
Woolf, Virginia, ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’ in Common Reader (second series) 1932
Eliot, T.S., After Strange Gods 1934 (for his attack on Hardy, recanted in letter to Roy Morrell of 15 May 1964, held at Berg: ‘The book in which I criticised Thomas Hardy severely is one which I have subsequently regretted, and I regret in particular what I said about Hardy. // I particularly admire The Mayor of Casterbridge and parts pf Far from the Madding Crowd. There are scenes in both which remain permanently in my memory, such as that when the Mayor of C looks over the bridge and sees his own effigy floating in the water.’ Eliot went on to say he found some of the poems ‘moving’ but thought Hardy should have pruned down his collection.)
Auden, W.H., ‘A Literary Transference’, Southern Review, 1940
Schwartz, Delmore, ‘Poetry and Belief in Thomas Hardy’, Southern Review, 1940
Cecil, David, Hardy the Novelist 1943
Brown, Douglas, Thomas Hardy 1954
Paterson, John, The Making of ‘The Return of the Native’ 1960
Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Albert Guerard 1963
Lodge, David, The Language of Fiction 1966
—‘The Woodlanders: A Darwinian Pastoral Elegy’, Introduction to New Wessex ed. 1974
Howe, Irving, Thomas Hardy 1967 (revised 1985)
Miller, J. Hillis, Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire 1970
Millgate, Michael, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist 1971
Williams, Merry, Thomas Hardy and Rural England 1972
Williams, Raymond, ‘Wessex and the Border’ in The Country and the City 1973
Ingham, Patricia, ‘The Evolution of Jude the Obscure’, Review of English Studies, new series, 27, 1976
Bayley, John, An Essay on Hardy 1978
King, Jeanette, Tragedy in the Victorian Novel 1978
Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy, ed. Dale Kramer 1979
Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage, ed. R.G. Cox 1995 (first pub. 1979)
Morgan, Rosemarie, Cancelled Words 1992 (a study of the changes made to Far from the Madding Crowd under Leslie Stephen’s editorial directions)
Wright, T.R., Hardy and His Readers 2003
Poetry
Richards, I.A., Science and Poetry 1926
Lucas, F.L., ‘Truth and Compassion’ in Ten Victorian Poets 1940, reprinted in Thomas Hardy. Poems: A Casebook, eds. James Gibson and Trevor Johnson 1979 (a valuable book – see below)
Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D.D. Paige 1950
Larkin, Philip, ‘A Poet’s Teaching for Poets’ (from a conversation with Vernon Scannell on Radio 4, printed in the Listener, 25 July 1968, reprinted in Thomas Hardy. Poems: A Casebook, eds. James Gibson and Trevor Johnson 1979)
Marsden, Kenneth, ‘Hardy’s Vocabulary’ in The Poems of Thomas Hardy 1969, reprinted in Thomas Hardy. Poems: A Casebook, eds. James Gibson and Trevor Johnson 1979
Gunn, Thom, ‘The Influence of Ballad-Forms’, Agenda, 1972, reprinted in Thomas Hardy. Poems: A Casebook, eds. James Gibson and Trevor Johnson 1979
Davie, Donald, Thomas Hardy and British Poetry 1973
Lerner, Lawrence, Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’: Tragedy or Social History? 1975
Hynes, Samuel, Introduction to Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy 1984
Hardy, Barbara, Imagining Imagination in Hardy’s Poetry and Fiction 2000
Beer, Gillian, ‘Hardy: The After-Life and the Life Before’ in Thomas Hardy: Texts and Contexts, ed. Phillip Mallet 2002
MISCELLANEOUS
Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy, ed. Norman Page 2000
Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy, ed. Dale Kramer 1999
Maugham, Somerset, Cakes and Ale 1930
Notes
PROLOGUE
1. ‘Dolly’ Gale of Piddlehinton, a wheelwright’s daughter and one of twelve children, was born in 1897, left school in 1911, saw an advertisement for a job as a maid with the Hardys, wrote off and bicycled over to be interviewed. She immediately liked Mrs Hardy and found her ‘considerate and kindly’. She disliked him. She said she never saw or heard them speak to each other in the year she spent there. She worked for them for about a year, leaving after Mrs Hardy’s death. She married and moved to Canada, where she was known as Alice Harvey, and she gave her recollections to J. Stevens Cox, who interviewed her in Ontario and wrote up the interview in The Thomas Hardy Year Book (St Peter Port, 1973–4). It must be remembered with this, as with other interviews given decades after the events described, that few people have perfect recall.
2. The placing of the coffin in his bedroom is described by Dolly Gale, ibid.
3. TH to Edward Clodd, 13 Dec. 1912, Letters, IV, 239.
4. Life, Chapter 32. Hardy explains that he has adopted the description of being ‘in flower’ as a poet from Walpole’s description of Gray.
5. ‘At Castle Boterel’. On the MS he first wrote ‘Boscastle: Cornwall’.
6. All of these quotes are from ‘Poems of 1912–13’. Hardy changed the ‘clodded’ to ‘jailing’ – I prefer the first version.
7. TH to Florence Henniker, 17 July 1914, Letters, V, 37–8.
8. The words are taken from the Aeneid, Book IV, line 23, where Dido explains that the love she once felt for her husband, now dead, will revive for Aeneas. In Book VI Aeneas, who has betrayed Dido’s love by abandoning her, so that she kills herself, encounters her silent ghost on his visit to Hades. J. Hillis Miller points out that the silence of Dido’s ghost is echoed in Hardy making the ghost of Emma ‘voiceless’ in ‘After a Journey’: see Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire (1970), 248–9. There were originally eighteen poems, to which Hardy added three more in later editions.
9. There is also a faint echo of Donne’s ‘Twicknam Garden’ (‘Blasted with sighs and surrounded with tears / Hither I come to seek the spring’) in the line ‘Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost.’ Edmund Gosse had given Hardy an edition of the poems of John Donne for his birthday in the summer of 1908. See his letter of thanks, 24 July 1908, ‘The Donne has arrived and is just the type for my eyes… 1000 thanks.’ Letters, III, 326.
10. Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Page (1950), 386, Pound writing to John Lackay Brown [n.d. but Apr. 1937], about Hardy’s Collected Poems.
11. Sydney Cockerell noted Florence Hardy’s remark to him in his diary for 24 Sept. 1916. British Library Add. MSS 52653.
12. From the unpublished diary kept by Arthur Benson, Nov. 1913, by permission of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
13. TH to Florence Henniker, 23 Dec. 1914, Letters, V, 70–71. ‘When I Set Out for Lyonnesse’ is in Satires of Circumstance but no
t among the ‘Poems of 1912–13’; nor is ‘Under the Waterfall’, based on Emma’s own account of losing their picnic glass in the summer of 1870. ‘Lost Love’ and ‘My Spirit Will Not Haunt the Mound’ are also about Emma.
14. New Statesman, 23 Dec. 1914.
15. ‘Days to Recollect’, first published in Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles, 1925. ‘On a Discovered Curl of Hair’ was written in Feb. 1913 but not published until 1922 in Late Lyrics and Earlier.
16. This is from ‘Penance’, first published in 1922 in Late Lyrics and Earlier.
Part One 1840–1867
1. MOTHER
1. Life, Chapter 1, first section. A surgeon is mentioned, but that is likely to be an embellishment, as cottage deliveries at this time were rarely presided over by doctors or surgeons. Life was written in the third person, since the author was ostensibly Hardy’s widow.
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. Hardy told Sydney Cockerell on 23 Aug. 1925 that ‘his mother had wished to call him Christopher, and that he wished he had had that name as there were so many Thomas Hardys.’ Cockerell’s diary for 1925, British Library Add. MSS 52662.
5. The 1801 census for Melbury Osmond is in the DCRO and shows Elizabeth Swetman, ‘Spinner’, living with her father, who was in Agricultural Husbandry, mother not working, and brother John employed like his father. See also Life, first section of Chapter 1.
6. The 1801 census shows ‘George Hann’, with some doubt about the spelling, in the household of the Revd Jenkins (DCRO).
7. Betty Hand to her daughter Mary, letter 17 Jan. 1842, in which she complains of her poverty separating her from her children, worries about her son Christopher’s brutal treatment of his pregnant wife and expresses her love for her grandson ‘Tomey’, i.e., little Thomas Hardy. DCM, Kate Hardy and Lock Collection.
8. TH to Frederic Harrison, 20 June 1918, Letters, V, 269.
9. Even if she went to school, as a girl she would have been made to concentrate on knitting, sewing and mending. A school founded in Dorchester in 1813 did not allow girls to learn either writing or ciphering (arithmetic) until they were ten and could already knit stockings, read the Bible fluently, repeat the Catechism and do ‘all sorts of common plain work’.
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