Thomas Hardy

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Standard Name: Hardy, Thomas
TH was a poet by vocation and became a novelist by profession. The Wessex of his novels has made him arguably a regional novelist. As well as a prolific output in both these forms, he published a unique verse epic bringing together human and supernatural characters, short fiction, a volume for children, and two volumes of actual autobiography masquerading as a biography by his second wife. Since his career as a publishing novelist ran from the 1870s to the 1890s, and his first volume of poetry post-dated his final novel, he has been seen as a Victorian novelist but a mostly twentieth-century poet. This description, however, is not true to the facts of composition. He wrote poetry from early in his life, but did not publish it in volume form until his final novel.
Black-and-white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Thomas Hardy by London Stereoscopic. He has a thin handlebar moustache, and wears a jacket and patterned tie with a stiff collar.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Charlotte Mew
The day before she died, CM gave Alida Monro a cherished copy of her poem Fin de Fête, the one transcribed in the British Library by Thomas Hardy .
Monro, Alida, and Charlotte Mew. “Charlotte Mew—A Memoir”. Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew, Gerald Duckworth, 1953, p. vii - xx.
xii
Dedications Mary Webb
She had finished this book towards the end of the previous year, and dedicated it by permission to Thomas Hardy .
Davies, Linda. Mary Webb Country. Palmers Press, 1990.
36
Education Cecily Mackworth
She was at first educated at home by thirteen successive governesses. Her mother sometimes read aloud to her daughters: R. D. Blackmore ' Lorna Doone and Anna Sewell 's Black Beauty. After meeting Hardy
Education Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
She read voraciously, preferring writers with the geographical rootedness which she herself lacked: George Eliot , Thomas Hardy , Charles Dickens , and from beyond the English tradition Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Henry James
Education Joan Riley
As a young child in Jamaica, JR says she found escape from the harsh realities of her life on the shelves of the local library. Reading whatever was available, she ranged from Shakespeare to...
Education Elizabeth Taylor
Betty Coles's first reading was Beatrix Potter , then Lewis CarrollAlice in Wonderland and E. Nesbit , whose Bastable stories she read over and over again. Though her parents were not bookish people she progressed at...
Education Ann Quin
Yet at this time books discovered in the public library taught her the possibilities in writing: Greek and Elizabethan dramatists. Dostoievsky (Crime and Punishment and Virginia Woolf 's The Waves . ....
Education Viola Meynell
After leaving school at sixteen, VM read widely on her own, especially English authors: George Eliot , Dickens , George Meredith , Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy , and Thomas Hardy .
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen, 2002.
61, 65
Education Margaret Atwood
She attended elementary school, and then from 1952 Leaside High School in Toronto, both in the Protestant public school system operating in Ontario alongside a Catholic one. She and her schoolmates got prayers and...
Family and Intimate relationships Iris Tree
Writer, critic, and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm was IT 's half-uncle, the youngest son from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's father's second marriage. Best remembered for his drawings and caricatures of the famous, Beerbohm also wrote...
Family and Intimate relationships Virginia Woolf
VW 's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), was a Victorian philosopher and historian of ideas . . . literary historian and critic, and—perhaps most important—a biographer.
Rosenbaum, S. P. “An Educated Man’s Daughter: Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group”. Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays, edited by Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, Vision; Barnes and Noble, 1983, pp. 32-56.
36
Mark Hussey writes that he was, after Matthew Arnold
Family and Intimate relationships Virginia Woolf
He was immensely influential. As editor of the Cornhill Magazine from 1871 to 1882, he published Henry James , Thomas Hardy , Matthew Arnold , Robert Browning , and George Meredith , among others.
Rosenbaum, S. P. “An Educated Man’s Daughter: Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group”. Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays, edited by Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, Vision; Barnes and Noble, 1983, pp. 32-56.
34
Family and Intimate relationships Q. D. Leavis
The Roths were devastated by their daughter's decision to marry a gentile. They disowned her and ceased to give her any financial support. However, this period had its happy moments as well. Q. D. introduced...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Stevenson
She found motherhood a struggle. She tried to keep up her serious reading (James , Hardy , Proust ) while breast-feeding, and to serve an elegant candlelit supper each evening while the baby cried...
Family and Intimate relationships Adelaide Procter
AP 's mother, born Anne Skepper , was a clever and observant woman, a frequent and influential hostess to the London literary elite. Frances Kemble considered her notable for her pungent epigrams and brilliant sallies...

Timeline

1876: John Maxwell sold Belgravia to Chatto and...

Writing climate item

1876

John Maxwell sold Belgravia to Chatto and Windus , ending Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's association with the monthly.
Edwards, Peter David et al. Indexes to Fiction in Belgravia 1867-1899. Victorian Fiction Research Unit, Department of English, University of Queensland, 1989.
passim

October 1877: Charles Kegan Paul arranged to purchase the...

Writing climate item

October 1877

Charles Kegan Paul arranged to purchase the publishing firm of his employer H. S. King to form Kegan Paul and Co.
Howsam, Leslie. Kegan Paul—A Victorian Imprint. Kegan Paul; University of Toronto Press, 1998.
2, 78, 81-2, 89, 136-7, 189

May 1893: The Pall Mall Magazine began monthly publication;...

Writing climate item

May 1893

The Pall Mall Magazine began monthly publication; it ran until September 1914.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
488
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.

2 September 1914: The British War Propaganda Bureau (newly...

Writing climate item

2 September 1914

The British War Propaganda Bureau (newly formed along the lines of a similar body in Germany) summoned twenty-five writers to discuss the production of texts that would boost national feeling and the war effort.
Spartacus Educational. 28 Feb. 2003, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/.

1952: The seventy-eight-year-old Somerset Maugham...

Writing climate item

1952

The seventy-eight-year-old Somerset Maugham confided to his former headmaster that he believed that the Order of Merit was something that they ought to award him, as the greatest living writer of English.
Tayler, Christopher. “I only want the OM”. London Review of Books, 1 Sept. 2005, pp. 19-22.
19

June 1966: Anthropologist Mary Douglas published her...

Women writers item

June 1966

AnthropologistMary Douglas published her best-known work, Purity and Danger, a study of ritual behaviour and taboo.
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. Routledge, 2002.
2, xvi-xviii
Fardon, Richard. Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography. Routledge, 1999.
80-3
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translator Roudiez, Leon S., Columbia University Press, 1982.
65-6
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1874–1987.
1967

Texts

Sigerson, Dora, and Thomas Hardy. A Dull Day in London. Eveleigh Nash, 1920.
Hardy, Thomas. A Pair of Blue Eyes. Tinsley Brothers, 1873, 3 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. Desperate Remedies. Tinsley Brothers, 1871, 3 vols.
Hardy, Thomas, and Helen Allingham. Far from the Madding Crowd. Smith, Elder, 1874, 2 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. “General Introduction”. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell, Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 1-103.
Hardy, Thomas. Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs, and Trifles. Macmillan, 1925.
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Osgood, McIlvaine, 1895.
Hardy, Thomas. Late Lyrics and Earlier : with many other Verses. Macmillan, 1922.
Hardy, Thomas. Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses. Macmillan, 1917.
Hardy, Thomas. Our Exploits at West Poley. Oxford University Press, 1952.
Hardy, Thomas, and Dora Sigerson. “Prefatory Note”. A Dull Day in London, Eveleigh Nash, 1920, pp. 7-8.
Hardy, Thomas. Satires of Circumstance. Macmillan, 1914.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Osgood, McIlvaine, 1891, 3 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Editors Purdy, Richard Little and Michael Millgate, Clarendon Press, 1988, 7 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. The Dynasts. Macmillan, 1908, 3 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 1840-1891. Editor Hardy, Florence, Macmillan, 1928.
Hardy, Thomas. The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928. Editor Hardy, Florence, Macmillan, 1930.
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. Smith, Elder, 1886, 2 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. Smith, Elder, 1878, 3 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. The Well-Beloved. Osgood, McIlvaine, 1897.
Hardy, Thomas. Under the Greenwood Tree. Tinsley Brothers, 1872, 2 vols.
Hardy, Thomas. Wessex Poems. Harper and Brothers, 1898.
Hardy, Thomas. Winter Words. Macmillan, 1928.