Thomas Hardy
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Thomas Hardy
Thomashardy restored.jpg
Naștere 2 iunie 1840
Stinsford, Dorchester, Anglia
Deces 11 ianuarie 1928
Dorchester
Ocupație poet, romancier
Naționalitateenglez Anglia
Activitatea literară
Mișcare/curent literar naturalism
Opere semnificative Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Departe de lumea dezlănțuită
Note
Signature of Thomas Hardy.jpg modifică Consultați documentația formatului
Thomas Hardy, (n. 2 iunie 1840 — d. 11 ianuarie 1928) a fost un scriitor și poet naturalist britanic, cunoscut pentru romanele sale „Tess” și „Departe de lumea dezlănțuită”. Evenimentele din majoritatea operelor sale se desfășoară în comitatul semi-imaginar Wessex și sunt marcate de descrieri poetice și fatalism.
Prin opera sa, caracterizată prin studiul amănunțit al caracterelor și ambianțelor, simpatie umană pentru eroi, prin viziunea fatalistă și pesimistă, se opune convenționalității epocii victoriene.
Cuprins [ascunde]
1 Biografie
2 Opera 2.1 Romane despre caracter și natură
2.2 Romane de dragoste și fantezii
2.3 Romane de candoare
2.4 Poezie (selecții)
2.5 Dramă
3 Note
4 Legături externe
4.1 Poezii
Biografie[modificare | modificare sursă]
Thomas Hardy s-a născut la Higher Bockhampton, un sătuc din parohia localității Stinsford, la est de Dorchester în comitatul Dorset. Tatăl său a fost un zidar și constructor local. Mama lui Hardy a fost o femeie educată și ambițioasă, contribuind la educația fiului ei până la împlinirea vârstei de 16 ani, când a devenit ucenicul lui John Hicks, un arhitect local. Hardy a studiat arhitectura la Dorchester până în 1862, când s-a mutat la Londra. Cinci ani mai târziu s-a întors la Dorset pentru a lucra ca asistentul lui Hicks. A fost premiat de Institutul Regal al Arhitecților Britanici și de Asociația Arhitecturală.
În 1870, Hardy a cunoscut-o pe Emma Lavinia Gifford, care i-a devenit soție în 1874. [1] Deși până la urmă s-au despărțit, decesul ei în 1912 a avut un efect traumatic asupra lui. A călătorit la Cornwall pentru a revedea locuri legate de ea și de tinerețea lor, și a scris o serie de poezii între 1912-13, prin care și-a exprimat durerea. Deși în 1914 s-a căsătorit cu secretara sa Florence Dugdale, care era cu 40 de ani mai tânără și pe care a cunoscut-o în 1905, Hardy a rămas preocupat de decesul subit al Emmei, încercând să-și învingă remușcarea compunând poezii.[2]
Scriitorul Robert Graves, în autobiografia sa "Goodbye to All That", își amintește de întâlnirea cu Hardy la Dorset la începutul anilor 1920. Hardy a fost o gazdă primitoare pentru Graves și proaspăta lui soție, și l-a încurajat pe tânărul autor în domeniul scrisului.
Viața religioasă a lui Hardy pare să fi fost un amestec de agnosticism și spiritism. Totuși el a scris deseori despre forțele spirituale care controlează universul mai mult prin indiferență sau capriciu decât prin reguli stricte. De asemenea, Hardy a dovedit în lucrările sale o anume fascinație referitor la fantome și spirite. În ciuda acestor sentimente, Hardy a avut totuși o legătură emoțională puternică față de ritualurile Bisericii Creștine, mai ales cele din comunitățile rurale, care au avut o influență formativă în timpul copilăriei sale. Unii critici literari au atribuit perspectiva cenușie din mai multe romane ale sale ca fiind reflectivă a părerii sale că nu există Dumnezeu.
Monumentul funerar al inimii lui Thomas Hardy
Hardy a făcut o infecție la plămâni în decembrie 1927 și a murit în ianuarie 1928, după ce a dictat ultimul său poem soției, pe patul morții. Înmormântarea sa, pe 16 ianuarie la catedrala Westminster Abbey, a fost un eveniment controversat: familia și prietenii au dorit ca locul de veci să fie la satul natal Stinsford, dar executorul său, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, a insistat să fie la "Poets' Corner" (Colțul Poeților, o secțiune de la Westminster Abbey unde se află urnele a numeroși poeți și scriitori britanici). S-a ajuns la un compromis prin care inima sa a fost îngropată la Stinsford cu Emma, iar cenușa a fost depusă la Colțul Poeților din Catedrala Westminster.
Opera lui Hardy a fost admirată de mulți autori, printre care D.H. Lawrence și Virginia Woolf. În 1910 i s-a acordat Ordinul Britanic de Merit.
La scurt timp după deces, corespondența și notele sale au fost arse de executorul său. Doisprezece dosare au rămas, unul din ele conținând note și extrase de articole de ziar din anii 1820, folosite de Hardy în ultimele sale lucrări.[3]
Opera[modificare | modificare sursă]
Romanele lui Hardy se desfășoară în comitatul fictiv Wessex (în parte real, în parte imaginar), care a păstrat numele regatului Anglo-Saxon care a existat în zonă. Peisajul a fost modelat după comitatele reale Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset și Wiltshire, cu locuri fictive bazate pe așezări reale. Hardy a descris epoca dinaintea căilor ferate și a revoluției industriale care au schimbat Anglia rurală. Operele sale au un ton pesimist și conțin o ironie amară, iar stilul său de scris este necizelat, dar lasă o impresie profundă. Hardy avea ochi pentru detalii amănunțite, ca de exemplu întinderea petei de sânge pe tavan de la sfârșitul romanului Tess of the d'Urbervilles sau nota de sinucidere din Jude the Obscure (trad. română Jude Neștiutul); el a păstrat articole și reportaje decupate din ziare, pe care le-a folosit ca detalii în romanele sale.
Primul roman al lui Hardy, The Poor Man and the Lady, terminat prin 1867, nu a fost preluat de nici o editură, iar Hardy a distrus manuscrisul; s-au păstrat doar fragmente. A fost încurajat de mentorul și prietenul său, scriitorul George Meredith, să încerce din nou. Desperate Remedies (1871) și Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) au fost publicate anonim. În 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, bazat pe curtea făcută de Hardy primei sale soții, a fost publicat sub numele propriu.
Hardy a declarat că a folosit comitatul Wessex pentru prima dată în Far from the Madding Crowd (trad. română Departe de lumea dezlănțuită) în (1874), următorul roman al său (și primul semnificativ). Romanul s-a bucurat de succes suficient pentru ca Hardy să poată renunța la activitatea arhitecturală și să se dedice carierei literare. Pe durata următorilor 25 de ani, Hardy a semnat încă zece romane. El însuși s-a referit la cele mai bune titluri ale sale ca "romane de caracter și împrejurări". Hardy a fost un pesimist care a subliniat forțele impersonale și în general negative ale soartei asupra oamenilor simpli ai clasei muncitoare despre care a scris.
Hardy și soția s-au mutat de la Londra la Yeovil și după aceea la Sturminster Newton, unde a scris The Return of the Native (1878). În 1885 s-au mutat pentru ultima oară, la Max Gate, o casă de lângă Dorchester proiectată de Hardy și construită de fratele său. Acolo a scris romanele The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) (trad. Primarul din Casterbridge), The Woodlanders (1887) (Pădurenii) și Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), din care ultimul a fost criticat pentru prezentarea prea înțelegătoare a unei "femei ușoare" și inițial i s-a refuzat publicarea. Subtitlul acestuia, A Pure Woman / Faithfully Narrated (O femeie pură / povestit cu fidelitate), a fost intenționat să ridice sprâncenele clasei mijlocii din era Victoriană.
Jude the Obscure (Jude neștiutul), publicat în 1895, a fost întâmpinat cu proteste și mai intense din partea publicului din era Victoriană pentru modul deschis tratează actele sexuale, și a fost adesea referit cu titlul "Jude the Obscene" (Jude obscenul). Romanul a fost foarte criticat pentru aparentul atac asupra instituției căsătoriei, și a contribuit la răcirea și mai gravă a relațiilor deja dificile dintre Hardy și soția sa, deoarece Emma Hardy a îngrijorat-o ideea că Jude the Obscure ar putea fi interpretat ca fiind un roman autobiografic. Unii vânzători de carte au vândut romanul în pungi de hârtie maro, iar episcopul de Wakefield este reputat că a ars un volum.[3] În ciuda acestor critici, Hardy devenise deja o celebritate în literatura engleză la începutul anilor 1900, fiind autorul mai multor romane foarte bine vândute. Totuși el a fost dezgustat de modul în care publicul a primit două din cele mai importante lucrări ale sale, și a renunțat să scrie noi romane. Câțiva critici literari sunt de părere că Hardy nu prea mai avea ce să scrie, epuizând creativ tonul din ce în ce mai fatalist al romanelor sale, între care Jude fiind punctul culminant.
Hardy și-a împărțit romanele și colecțiile de nuvele în trei categorii:
Romane despre caracter și natură[modificare | modificare sursă]
The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, nepublicat și pierdut)
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
Far from the Madding Crowd (Departe de lumea dezlănțuită, 1874)
The Return of the Native (Întoarcerea băștinașului, 1878)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (Primarul din Casterbridge, 1886)
The Woodlanders (1887)
Wessex Tales (1888, colecție de povestiri)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
Life's Little Ironies ( Micile ironii ale vietii, 1894, colecție de povestiri)
Jude the Obscure (Jude neștiutul, 1895)
Romane de dragoste și fantezii[modificare | modificare sursă]
A Pair of Blue Eyes ( Doi ochi albastri, 1873)
The Trumpet-Major (1880)
Two on a Tower ( Idila pe un turn, 1882)
A Group of Noble Dames (1891, colecție de povestiri)
The Well-Beloved (1897) (publicat sub formă de serial în 1892).
Romane de candoare[modificare | modificare sursă] Desperate Remedies (1871)
The Hand of Ethelberta (1876)
A Laodicean (1881)
Hardy a mai scris povestiri scurte și un roman în colaborare, intitulat The Spectre of the Real (Fantoma realului)(1894). Altă colecție de povestiri, în afara celor menționate mai sus, este A Changed Man and Other Tales (Un om schimbat și alte povești), 1913. Operele sale au fost publicate în antologiile de 24 de volume a ediției Wessex (1912-1913) și 37 de volume în ediția Mellstock (1919-1920). Biografia sa, în mare parte scrisă de el însuși, apare sub numele celei de-a doua soții, în două volume apărute între anii 1928-1930, cu titlul The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 (Tinerețea lui Thomas Hardy) și The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928; actualmente apărută într-un singur volum sub titlul The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy (Viața și opera lui Thomas Hardy) în 1984.
Poezie (selecții)[modificare | modificare sursă]
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (Poezii din Wesex și alte versuri, 1898)
Poems of the Past and Present (1901)
The Dynasts|The Dynasts, Part 1 (Suveranii, partea 1, 1904)
The Dynasts|The Dynasts, Part 2 (Suveranii, partea 2, 1906)
The Dynasts|The Dynasts, Part 3 (Suveranii, partea 3, 1908)
Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
Satires of Circumstance (1914)
Collected Poems (1919, parte din ediția Mellstock)
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1922)
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (Cuvinte de iarnă în diverse moduri și metrici, 1928, publicat post-mortem)
Dramă[modificare | modificare sursă]
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (1923)
Note[modificare | modificare sursă] ^ "Thomas Hardy - the Time-Torn Man", BBC Radio 4, difuzat la 24 octombrie 2006 (lectură de Claire Tomalin a cărții cu același titlu).
^ bbc.co.uk (accesat la 12 august 2006)
^ a b bbc.co.uk, (accesat la 12 august 2006)
Legături externe[modificare | modificare sursă]
Wikicitat
La Wikicitat găsiți citate legate de Thomas Hardy.
Wikisursă
La Wikisursă există texte originale legate de Thomas Hardy
Commons
Wikimedia Commons conține materiale multimedia legate de Thomas Hardy
Poezii de Thomas Hardy la PoetryFoundation.org
Poezii alese la Inspired Poetry
Lucrări de Thomas Hardy la Proiectul Gutenberg
Thomas Hardy's Wessex site, inclusiv hărți, de Dr Birgit Plietzsch
Eseu despre Hardy's Afterwards
Societatea Thomas Hardy
Asociația Thomas Hardy
Opere de Thomas Hardy varianta e-book
Urna lui Thomas Hardy de la Westminster Abbey
Fotografii cu Thomas Hardy vizitând-o pe Marie Stopes la farul din Portland, Dorset
Scrisoare a lui Hardy către Bertram Windle, transcrisă de Birgit Plietzsch, după CL, vol 2, pp 131-133
Viața și moartea lui Thomas Hardy @ Ward's Book of Days
Poezii[modificare | modificare sursă]
The Dead Man Walking
At Castle Boterel Afterwards
On the Departure Platform
The Robin
The Oxen
Categorii: Nașteri în 1840Decese în 1928Scriitori britaniciPanteiștiÎnmormântări la Westminster AbbeyPersoane care au refuzat titlul de cavalerFellows of the Royal Society of Literature
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Modifică legăturile
Ultima modificare efectuată la 17:58, 30 decembrie 2014.
Acest text este disponibil sub licența Creative Commons cu atribuire și
Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth.[1] Charles Dickens was another important influence.[2] Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). However, beginning in the 1950s Hardy has been recognised as a major poet; he had a significant influence on the Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s, including Philip Larkin.[3]
Most of his fictional works – initially published as serials in magazines – were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. They explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances. Hardy's Wessex is based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom and eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England.
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Novels
3 Literary themes
4 Poetry
5 Religious beliefs
6 Locations in novels
7 Influence
8 Works
8.1 Prose
8.2 Poetry collections
8.3 Drama
9 References
10 Biographies and criticism
10.1 Research resources
11 External links Life[edit]
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Higher Bockhampton (Upper Bockhampton in his day), a hamlet in the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, where his father Thomas (died 1892) worked as a stonemason and local builder. His mother Jemima (née Hand;[4] died 1904) was well-read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at age eight. For several years he attended Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester. Here he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential.[5] Because Hardy's family lacked the means for a university education, his formal education ended at the age of sixteen, when he became apprenticed to James Hicks, a local architect. [6] Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester before moving to London in 1862; there he enrolled as a student at King's College London. He won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association. Hardy was in charge of the excavation of the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church prior to its destruction when the Midland Railway was extended to a new terminus at St Pancras.[7]
But Hardy never felt at home in London, because he was acutely conscious of class divisions and his social inferiority. However, during this time he became interested in social reform and the works of John Stuart Mill. He was also introduced by his Dorset friend Horace Moule to the works of Charles Fourier and Auguste Comte. Five years later, concerned about his health, he returned to Dorset, settling at Weymouth, and decided to dedicate himself to writing.
In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall,[8] Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married in 1874.[9][10] Although they later became estranged, her death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him and after her death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship, and his Poems 1912–13 reflect upon her death. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. However, he remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry.[11] In 1910, Hardy had been awarded the Order of Merit.
Florence Hardy at the seashore, 1915
In 1885 Thomas and his wife moved into Max Gate, a house Hardy had designed himself and his brother had built. Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on 11 January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed; the cause of death was cited, on his death certificate, as "cardiac syncope", with "old age" given as a contributory factor. His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy and his family and friends had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. However, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.[12]
Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors of his estate burnt his letters and notebooks, but twelve documents survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of newspaper stories from the 1820s, and research into these has provided insight into how Hardy used them in his works.[13] In the year of his death Mrs Hardy published The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1841–1891, compiled largely from contemporary notes, letters, diaries, and biographical memoranda, as well as from oral information in conversations extending over many years.
Hardy's work was admired by many younger writers, including D. H. Lawrence,[14] John Cowper Powys,[15] and Virginia Woolf.[16] In his autobiography Goodbye to All That, (1929) Robert Graves recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s and how Hardy received him and his new wife warmly, and was encouraging about his work.
Hardy's birthplace in Bockhampton and his house Max Gate, both in Dorchester, are owned by the National Trust.
Novels[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2014) Thomas Hardy's birthplace at Higher Bockhampton, where Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd were written
View of the River Frome from the bridge at Lower Bockhampton. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles the lowland vale of the river is described as the Vale of the Great Dairies, in comparison to Tess's home, the fertile Vale of Blackmore, which is the Vale of Little Dairies.
Hardy's first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher. He then showed it to his mentor and friend, the Victorian poet and novelist, George Meredith, who felt that The Poor Man and the Lady would be too politically controversial and might damage Hardy's ability to publish in the future. So Hardy followed his advice and he did not try further to publish it. Later, he destroyed the manuscript.
After he abandoned his first novel, Hardy wrote two new ones that he hoped would have more commercial appeal, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), both of which were published anonymously. In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, a novel drawing on Hardy's courtship of his first wife, was published under his own name. The term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated with the serialised version of this story (which was published in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873) in which Henry Knight, one of the protagonists, is left literally hanging off a cliff.
In his next novel Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Hardy first introduced the idea of calling the region in the west of England, where his novels are set, Wessex. Wessex had been the name of an early Saxon kingdom, in approximately the same part of England. Far from the Madding Crowd was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next twenty-five years Hardy produced ten more novels.
Subsequently the Hardys moved from London to Yeovil, and then to Sturminster Newton, where he wrote The Return of the Native (1878). Hardy published Two on a Tower in 1882, a romance story set in the world of astronomy. Then in 1885, they moved for the last time, to Max Gate, a house outside Dorchester designed by Hardy and built by his brother. There he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), the last of which attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman" and was initially refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented, was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle classes.
Egdon Heath, a major location of The Return of the Native.
Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with an even stronger negative response from the Victorian public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion and marriage. Furthermore its apparent attack on the institution of marriage caused further strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, and the Bishop of Wakefield, Walsham How, is reputed to have burnt his copy.[13] In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident as part of the career of the book: "After these [hostile] verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop – probably in his despair at not being able to burn me".[17] Despite this, Hardy had become a celebrity by the 1900s, but some argue that he gave up writing novels because of the criticism of both Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.[18] The Well-Beloved, first serialized in 1892, was published in 1897.
Hardy painted by William Strang, 1893
Literary themes[edit]
Considered a Victorian realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England, and criticizes those beliefs, especially those relating to marriage, education and religion, that limited people's lives and caused unhappiness. Such unhappiness, and the suffering it brings, is seen by poet Philip Larkin as central in Hardy's works:
What is the intensely maturing experience of which Hardy's modern man is most sensible? In my view it is suffering, or sadness, and extended consideration of the centrality of suffering in Hardy's work should be the first duty of the true critic for which the work is still waiting [. . .] Any approach to his work, as to any writer's work, must seek first of all to determine what element is peculiarly his, which imaginative note he strikes most plangently, and to deny that in this case it is the sometimes gentle, sometimes ironic, sometimes bitter but always passive apprehension of suffering is, I think, wrong-headed.[19] In Two on a Tower, for example, Hardy takes a stand against these rules of society with a story of love that crosses the boundaries of class. The reader is forced to reconsider the conventions set up by society for the relationships between women and men. Nineteenth-century society had conventions, which were enforced. In this novel Swithin St Cleeve's idealism pits him against such contemporary social constraints.
In a novel structured around contrasts, the main opposition is between Swithin St Cleeve and Lady Viviette Constantine, who are presented as binary figures in a series of ways: aristocratic and lower class, youthful and mature, single and married, fair and dark, religious and agnostic...she [Lady Viviette Constantine] is also deeply conventional, absurdly wishing to conceal their marriage until Swithin has achieved social status through his scientific work, which gives rise to uncontrolled ironies and tragic-comic misunderstandings.[20]
Fate or chance is another important theme. Hardy's characters often encounter crossroads on a journey, a junction that offers alternative physical destinations but which is also symbolic of a point of opportunity and transition, further suggesting that fate is at work. Far From the Madding Crowd is an example of a novel in which chance has a major role: "Had Bathsheba not sent the valentine, had Fanny not missed her wedding, for example, the story would have taken an entirely different path."[21] Indeed, Hardy's main characters often seem to be held in fate's overwhelming grip.
Poetry[edit]
Thomas Hardy by Walter William Ouless, 1922
For online poems, see "Poetry collections" below.
In 1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. While some suggest that Hardy gave up writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, the poet C. H. Sisson calls this "hypothesis" "superficial and absurd".[22][23] In the twentieth century Hardy only published poetry.
Thomas Hardy wrote in a great variety of poetic forms including lyrics, ballads, satire, dramatic monologues, and dialogue, as well as a three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts (1904-8),[24] and though in some ways a very traditional poet, because he was influenced by folksong and ballads,[25] he "was never conventional," and "persistently experiment[ed] with different, often invented, stanza forms and metres,[26] and made use of "rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction".[27]
A portrait of Thomas Hardy in 1923
Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both the Boer Wars and World War I, including “Drummer Hodge”, “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations,” and "The Man He Killed" and "[h]is work had a profound influence on other war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon".[28] Hardy in these poems often used the viewpoint of ordinary soldiers and their colloquial speech.[29] A theme in the Wessex Poems is the long shadow that the Napoleonic Wars cast over the nineteenth century, as seen, for example, in "The Sergeant's Song" and "Leipzig".[30] The Napoleonic War is of course the subject of The Dynasts.
Some of Hardy's most famous poems are from "Poems of 1912–13", part of Satires of Circumstance (1914), written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. They had been estranged for twenty years and these lyric poems express deeply felt "regret and remorse".[31] Poems like “After a Journey,” “The Voice,” and others from this collection "are by general consent regarded as the peak of his poetic achievement".[24] In a recent biography on Hardy, Claire Tomalin argues that Hardy became a truly great English poet after the death of his first wife, Emma, beginning with these elegies, which she describes as among "the finest and strangest celebrations of the dead in English poetry."[32]
Many of Hardy's poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and "the perversity of fate", but the best of them present these themes with "a carefully controlled elegiac feeling".[33] Irony is also an important element in a number of Hardy's poems, including "The Man he Killed" and "Are You Digging on My Grave". [34] A few of Hardy's poems, such as "The Blinded Bird", a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting, reflect his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited also in his antivivisectionist views and his membership in The Royal Society Against Cruelty to Animals RSPCA.[35] A number of notable English composers, including Gerald Finzi,[36] Benjamin Britten,[37] and Gustav Holst,[38] set poems by Hardy to music. Holst also wrote Egdon Heath (Homage to Hardy), for orchestra, Op. 47.
Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels had been, Hardy is now recognised as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets, and his verse has had a profound influence on later writers, including Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and, most notably Philip Larkin.[27] Larkin included twenty-seven poems by Hardy compared with only nine by T. S. Eliot in his edition of the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse in 1973 (though, of course, Eliot is most famous for long poems).[39] There were also fewer poems by W. B. Yeats.[40]
Religious beliefs[edit]
Hardy's family was Anglican, but not especially devout. He was baptised at the age of five weeks and attended church, where his father and uncle contributed to music. However, he did not attend the local Church of England school, instead being sent to Mr Last's school, three miles away. As a young adult, he befriended Henry R. Bastow (a Plymouth Brethren man), who also worked as a pupil architect, and who was preparing for adult baptism in the Baptist Church. Hardy flirted with conversion, but decided against it.[41] Bastow went to Australia and maintained a long correspondence with Hardy, but eventually Hardy tired of these exchanges and the correspondence ceased. This concluded Hardy's links with the Baptists.
The irony and struggles of life and a curious mind led him to question the traditional Christian view of God:
The Christian god – the external personality – has been replaced by the intelligence of the First Cause...the replacement of the old concept of God as all-powerful by a new concept of universal consciousness. The 'tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous' is replaced by the 'unconscious will of the Universe' which progressively grows aware of itself and 'ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic'. [42]
Hardy's religious life seems to have mixed agnosticism, deism, and spiritism. Once, when asked in correspondence by a clergyman about the question of reconciling the horrors of pain with the goodness of a loving God, Hardy replied, Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics.[43]
Hardy frequently conceived of, and wrote about, supernatural forces, particularly those that control the universe through indifference or caprice rather than any firm will. He also showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits.[43] Even so, he retained a strong emotional attachment to the Christian liturgy and church rituals, particularly as manifested in rural communities, that had been such a formative influence in his early years, and Biblical references can be found woven throughout many of Hardy's novels.
Hardy's friends during his apprenticeship to John Hicks included Horace Moule (one of the eight sons of Henry Moule), and the poet William Barnes, both ministers of religion. Moule remained a close friend of Hardy's for the rest of his life, and introduced him to new scientific findings that cast doubt on literal interpretations of the Bible,[44] such as those of Gideon Mantell. Moule gave Hardy a copy of Mantell's book The Wonders of Geology (1848) in 1858, and Adelene Buckland has suggested that there are "compelling similarities" between the "cliffhanger" section from A Pair of Blue Eyes and Mantell's geological descriptions. It has also been suggested that the character of Henry Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes was based on Horace Moule.[45]
Grave of Thomas Hardy's heart at Stinsford parish church
Locations in novels[edit]
Sites associated with Hardy's own life and which inspired the settings of his novels continue to attract literary tourists and casual visitors. For locations in Hardy's novels see: Thomas Hardy's Wessex, and the Thomas Hardy's Wessex[46] research site, which includes maps.[47]
Influence[edit]
D. H. Lawrence's Study of Thomas Hardy (1936), indicates the importance of Hardy for him, even though this work is a platform for Lawrence's own developing philosophy rather than a more standard literary study. The influence of Hardy's treatment of character, and Lawrence's own response to the central metaphysic behind many of Hardy's novels, helped significantly in the development of The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920). A contemporary of Lawrence, John Cowper Powys's first novel, Wood and Stone (1915) was "Dedicated with devoted admiration to the greatest poet and novelist of our age Thomas Hardy". Hardy was clearly the starting point for the character of the novelist Edward Driffield in W Somerset Maugham's novel Cakes and Ale (1930). Thomas Hardy's works also feature prominently in the American playwright Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo (1985), in which a graduate thesis analysing Tess of the d'Urbervilles is interspersed with analysis of Matt's family's neuroses.
Works[edit]
The title page from a 1874 first edition of Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
Prose[edit]
Hardy divided his novels and collected short stories into three classes:
Novels of Character and Environment
The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, unpublished and lost)
Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
The Return of the Native (1878)
The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (1886)
The Woodlanders (1887)
Wessex Tales (1888, a collection of short stories)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891)
Life's Little Ironies (1894, a collection of short stories)
Jude the Obscure (1895) Romances and Fantasies
A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (1873)
The Trumpet-Major (1880)
Two on a Tower: A Romance (1882)
A Group of Noble Dames (1891, a collection of short stories)
The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament (1897) (first published as a serial from 1892)
Novels of Ingenuity
Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871)
The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876)
A Laodicean: A Story of To-day (1881)
Online texts: Works by Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg and Works by Thomas Hardy[48] at Internet Archive
Hardy also produced a number of minor tales; one story, The Spectre of the Real (1894) was written in collaboration with Florence Henniker.[49] An additional short- story collection, beyond the ones mentioned above, is A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913). His works have been collected as the 24-volume Wessex Edition (1912–13) and the 37-volume Mellstock Edition (1919–20). His largely self-written biography appears under his second wife's name in two volumes from 1928 to 1930, as The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–91 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928, now published in a critical one-volume edition as The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, edited by Michael Millgate (1984).
Short stories (with date of first publication)
"How I Built Myself A House" (1865)
"Destiny and a Blue Cloak" (1874) "The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing" (1877)
"The Duchess of Hamptonshire" (1878)
"The Distracted Preacher" (1879)
"Fellow-Townsmen" (1880)
"The Honourable Laura" (1881)
"What The Shepherd Saw" (1881)
"A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four" (1882)
"The Three Strangers" (1883)
"The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid" (1883)
"Interlopers at the Knap" (1884)
"A Mere Interlude" (1885)
"A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork" (1885)
"Alicia's Diary" (1887)
"The Waiting Supper" (1887–88)
"The Withered Arm" (1888)
"A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" (1888)
"The First Countess of Wessex" (1889)
"Anna, Lady Baxby" (1890)
"The Lady Icenway" (1890)
"Lady Mottisfont" (1890)
"The Lady Penelope" (1890)
"The Marchioness of Stonehenge" (1890)
"Squire Petrick's Lady" (1890)
"Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890)
"The Melancholy Hussar of The German Legion" (1890)
"Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir" (1891) "The Winters and the Palmleys" (1891)
"For Conscience' Sake" (1891)
"Incident in Mr. Crookhill's Life"(1891)
"The Doctor's Legend" (1891)
"Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk" (1891)
"The History of the Hardcomes" (1891)
"Netty Sargent's Copyhold" (1891)
"On The Western Circuit" (1891)
"A Few Crusted Characters: Introduction" (1891)
"The Superstitious Man's Story" (1891)
"Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver" (1891)
"To Please His Wife" (1891)
"The Son's Veto" (1891)
"Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician" (1891)
"Our Exploits At West Poley" (1892–93)
"Master John Horseleigh, Knight" (1893)
"The Fiddler of the Reels" (1893)
"An Imaginative Woman" (1894)
"The Spectre of the Real" (1894)
"A Committee-Man of 'The Terror'" (1896)
"The Duke's Reappearance" (1896)
"The Grave by the Handpost" (1897)
"A Changed Man" (1900)
"Enter a Dragoon" (1900)
"Blue Jimmy: The Horse Stealer" (1911)
"Old Mrs. Chundle" (1929) "The Unconquerable"(1992)
Poetry collections[edit]
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
Satires of Circumstance (1914)
Moments of Vision (1917)
Collected Poems (1919)
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1923)
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928)
The Complete Poems (Macmillan, 1976)
Selected Poems (Edited by Harry Thomas, Penguin, 1993)
Hardy: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 1995)
Thomas Hardy: Selected Poetry and Nonfictional Prose (St. Martin's Press, 1996)
Selected Poems (Edited by Robert Mezey, Penguin, 1998)
Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (Edited by James Gibson, Palgrave, 2001)
Online poems: Poems by Thomas Hardy[50] at Poetry Foundation and Poems by Thomas Hardy at poemhunter.com[51]
Drama[edit]
The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon (verse drama)
The Dynasts, Part 1 (1904)
The Dynasts, Part 2 (1906)
The Dynasts, Part 3 (1908)
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse (1923) (one- act play) References[edit]
Jump up ^ Dennis Taylor, "Hardy and Wordsworth". Victorian Poetry, vol.24, no.4, Winter, 1986.
Jump up ^ Gillian Beer, Darwin's Plots. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Jump up ^ Donald Davie,Thomas Hardy and British Poetry. London: Routlefge and Kegan Paul, 1973.
Jump up ^ http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/13/thomashardy
Jump up ^ Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy: the Time-torn Man(Penguin, 2007) pp.30,36.
Jump up ^ Walsh, Lauren. Introduction. The Return of the Native. By Thomas Hardy. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. Print.
Jump up ^ Burley, Peter (2012). "When steam railroaded history". Cornerstone 33 (1): 9.
Jump up ^ Gibson, James (ed.) (1975) Chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan Education; p.9.
Jump up ^ Hardy, Emma (1961) Some Recollections by Emma Hardy; with some relevant poems by Thomas Hardy; ed. by Evelyn Hardy & R. Gittings. London: Oxford University Press
Jump up ^ "Thomas Hardy – the Time-Torn Man" (a reading of Claire Tomalin's book of the same name), BBC Radio 4, 23 October 2006
Jump up ^ "Wiltshire Days Out - Thomas Hardy at Stourhead". BBC. Retrieved 2014- 05-19.
Jump up ^ Bradford,Charles Angell (1933). Heart Burial. London: Allen & Unwin. p. 246. ISBN 9-781162-771816.
^ Jump up to: a b "Homeground: Dead man talking" at the Wayback Machine BBC Online, 20 August 2003 (Retrieved: 7 September 2009)
Jump up ^ Study of Thomas Hardy and other essays (1914), edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 1985, ISBN 0-521-25252-0, Literary criticism and metaphysics
Jump up ^ Powys's first novel, Wood and Stone (1915) is dedicated to Hardy.
Jump up ^ "The Novels of Thomas Hardy", The Common Reader, Second Series. Jump up ^ Hardy, Thomas (1998). Jude the Obscure. Penguin Classics. p. 466. ISBN 0-14-043538-7.
Jump up ^ "Thomas Hardy", The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edition, vol.2 . New York: W. W. Norton, 2000, p.1916.
Jump up ^ Larkin, Philip 1983, "Wanted: Good Hardy Critic" in Required Writing, London: Faber and Faber.
Jump up ^ Geoffrey Harvey, Thomas Hardy: The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy. New York: Routledge, 2003, p.108.
Jump up ^ "Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy – Introduction (Twentieth- Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 153. Gale Group, Inc., 2005". Enotes.com. 12 March 2008. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
Jump up ^ "Thomas Hardy", The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edition, vol.2 . New York: W. W. Norton, 2000, p.1916.
Jump up ^ "Introduction" to the Penguin edition of Jude the Obscure (1978). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984, p.13.
^ Jump up to: a b "Thomas Hardy (British writer) - Encyclopedia Britannica". Britannica.com. 2013-11-06. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ "Thomas Hardy", The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne Davies. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990, p.583.
Jump up ^ The Bloomsbury Guide, p.583.
^ Jump up to: a b "Thomas Hardy | Academy of American Poets". Poets.org. 1928- 01-11. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ Axelrod, Jeremy. "Thomas Hardy". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ Axelrod, Jeremy. "Thomas Hardy". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ Katherine Kearney Maynard, Thomas Hardy's Tragic Poetry: The Lyrics and The Dynasts. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991, pp.8-12.
Jump up ^ Axelrod, Jeremy. "Thomas Hardy". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ Tomalin, Claire. "Thomas Hardy." New York: Penguin, 2007.
Jump up ^ "The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edition, vol. 2, p.1916. Jump up ^ Katherine Kearney Maynard, Thomas Hardy's Tragic Poetry: The Lyrics and The Dynasts. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991, pp8-12.
Jump up ^ Herbert N. Schneidau. Waking Giants: The Presence of the Past in Modernism. Retrieved 16 April 2008. (Google Books)
Jump up ^ "Biography « Gerald Finzi Official Site". Geraldfinzi.com. 1956-09-27. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ Song cycle "Winter Words (1953)
Jump up ^ "Gustav Holst (The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)". Recmusic.org. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
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Jump up ^ Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy, The Time Torn Man(Penguin, 2007), pp.46–47.
Jump up ^ Wotton, George. Thomas Hardy: Towards A Materialist Criticism. Lanham,: Rowman & Littlefield, 1985, p.36.
^ Jump up to: a b Ellman, Richard, & O'Clair, Robert (eds.) 1988. "Thomas Hardy" in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Norton, New York.
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Jump up ^ "Adelene Buckland: Thomas Hardy, Provincial Geology and the Material Imagination". Retrieved 10 December 2011.
Jump up ^ "Thomas Hardy's Wessex". St-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ "Thomas Hardy's Wessex: The Evolution of Wessex". St-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ "Internet Archive Search: creator:thomas hardy -contributor:gutenberg". Archive.org. 1928-01-11. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
Jump up ^ Purdy, Richard (October 1944). "Thomas Hardy And Florence Henniker: The Writing Of "The Spectre Of The Real". Colby Library Quarterly, series 1, no.8: 122–6.
Jump up ^ Axelrod, Jeremy. "Thomas Hardy". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2014-05-19. Jump up ^ http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/thomas_hardy_2004_9.pdf
Biographies and criticism[edit]
Armstrong, Tim. "Player Piano: Poetry and Sonic Modernity" in Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (January 2007), 1–19.
Beatty, Claudius J.P. Thomas Hardy: Conservation Architect. His Work for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 1995. ISBN 0-900341-44-0
Blunden, Edmund. Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's, 1942.
Brennecke, Jr., Ernest. The Life of Thomas Hardy. New York: Greenberg, 1925.
D'Agnillo, Renzo, "Music and Metaphor in Under the Greenwood Tree, in The Thomas Hardy Journal, 9, 2 (May 1993), pp.39–50.
D'Agnillo, Renzo, “Between Belief and Non-Belief: Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Shadow on the Stone’”, in Thomas Hardy, Francesco Marroni and Norman Page (eds), Pescara, Edizioni Tracce, 1995, pp.197–222.
Deacon, Lois and Terry Coleman. Providence and Mr. Hardy. London: Hutchinson, 1966.
Draper, Jo. Thomas Hardy: A Life in Pictures. Wimborne, Dorset: The Dovecote Press.
Ellman, Richard & O'Clair, Robert (eds.) 1988. "Thomas Hardy" in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Norton, New York.
Gatrell, Simon. Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Gibson, James. Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1996.
Gittings, Robert. Thomas Hardy's Later Years. Boston : Little, Brown, 1978.
Gittings, Robert. Young Thomas Hardy. Boston : Little, Brown, 1975.
Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. The Second Mrs Hardy. London: Heinemann, 1979.
Gossin, P. Thomas Hardy's Novel Universe: Astronomy, Cosmology, and Gender in the Post-Darwinian World. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007 (The Nineteenth Century Series).
Halliday, F. E. Thomas Hardy: His Life and Work. Bath: Adams & Dart, 1972.
Hands, Timothy. Thomas Hardy : Distracted Preacher? : Hardy's religious biography and its influence on his novels. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
Hardy, Evelyn. Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 1954. Hardy, Florence Emily. The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891. London: Macmillan, 1928.
Hardy, Florence Emily. The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928 London: Macmillan, 1930.
Harvey, Geoffrey. Thomas Hardy: The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy. New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2003.
Hedgcock, F. A., Thomas Hardy: penseur et artiste. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1911.
Holland, Clive. Thomas Hardy O.M.: The Man, His Works and the Land of Wessex. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1933.
Jedrzejewski, Jan. Thomas Hardy and the Church. London: Macmillan, 1996.
Johnson, Lionel Pigot. The art of Thomas Hardy (London: E. Mathews, 1894).
Kay-Robinson, Denys. The First Mrs Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Langbaum, Robert. "Thomas Hardy in Our Time." New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, London: Macmillan, 1997.
Marroni, Francesco, "The Negation of Eros in 'Barbara of the House of Grebe’ ", in "Thomas Hardy Journal", 10, 1 (February 1994) pp. 33–41
Marroni, Francesco and Norman Page (eds.), Thomas Hardy. Pescara: Edizioni Tracce, 1995.
Marroni, Francesco, La poesia di Thomas Hardy. Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1997.
Marroni, Francesco, "The Poetry of Ornithology in Keats, Leopardi, and Hardy: A Dialogic Analysis", in "Thomas Hardy Journal", 14, 2 (May 1998) pp. 35–44
Millgate, Michael (ed.). The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy by Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan, 1984.
Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1982.
Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Morgan, Rosemarie, (ed) The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy, (Ashgate publishing), 2010.
Morgan, Rosemarie, (ed) The Hardy Review,(Maney Publishing), 1999–.
Morgan, Rosemarie, Student Companion to Thomas Hardy (Greenwood Press),2006. Morgan, Rosemarie, Cancelled Words: Rediscovering Thomas Hardy (Routledge, Chapman & Hall),1992
Morgan, Rosemarie, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1988; paperback: 1990.
Musselwhite, David, Social Transformations in Hardy's Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
O'Sullivan, Timothy. Thomas Hardy: An Illustrated Biography. London: Macmillan, 1975.
Orel, Harold. The Final Years of Thomas Hardy, 1912–1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976.
Orel, Harold. The Unknown Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's, 1987.
Phelps, Kenneth. The Wormwood Cup: Thomas Hardy in Cornwall. Padstow: Lodenek Press, 1975.
Pinion, F. B. Thomas Hardy: His Life and Friends. London: Palgrave, 1992.
Pite, Ralph. Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life. London: Picador, 2006.
Saxelby, F. Outwin. A Thomas Hardy dictionary : the characters and scenes of the novels and poems alphabetically arranged and described (London: G. Routledge, 1911).
Seymour-Smith, Martin. Hardy. London: Bloomsbury, 1994.
Stevens-Cox, J. Thomas Hardy: Materials for a Study of his Life, Times, and Works. St. Peter Port, Guernsey: Toucan Press, 1968.
Stevens-Cox, J. Thomas Hardy: More Materials for a Study of his Life, Times, and Works. St. Peter Port, Guernsey: Toucan Press, 1971.
Stewart, J. I. M. Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1971.
Turner, Paul. The Life of Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Weber, Carl J. Hardy of Wessex, his Life and Literary Career. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.
Wilson, Keith. Thomas Hardy on Stage. London: Macmillan, 1995.
Wilson, Keith, ed. Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Michael Millgate. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Wilson, Keith, ed. A Companion to Thomas Hardy. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Wotton, George. Thomas Hardy: Towards A Materialist Criticism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1985.
Letter from Hardy to Bertram Windle, transcribed by Birgit Plietzsch, from CL, vol 2, pp.131–133 The letter is contained in the maps section of the TTHA website.
Works by or about Thomas Hardy in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
A Hyper-Concordance to the Works of Thomas Hardy at the Victorian Literary Studies Archive, Nagoya University, Japan
Research resources[edit]
Thomas Hardy Memorial Collection at Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, Dorset. The largest Hardy collections in the world, donated directly to the Museum by the Hardty family and enscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register for the United Kingdom.
Hardy Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
External links[edit]
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[hide] v t e Works by Thomas Hardy
Novels
The Poor Man and the Lady (1867) Desperate Remedies (1871) Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) The Return of the Native (1878) The Trumpet- Major (1880) A Laodicean (1881) Two on a Tower (1882) The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) The Woodlanders (1887) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) Jude the Obscure (1895) The Well-Beloved (1897)