Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Thomas Hardy
-
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.
This book produced the first of PF
's shortlistings for the Booker prize.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Valentine Cunningham
in the Times Literary Supplement registered enjoyment of the rich repertoire of odd characters and the Hardy
-like gothic...
Literary responses
Viola Meynell
Alice Meynell
initially felt that the book was too personal and outspoken. She asked Viola to lessen and modify and veil the detailed and repeated record of caresses, and added: These are things that are...
Literary responses
Wendy Cope
Reviewer Andrew O'Hagan
, however, applies a withering pen to WC
in a tirade about a general style of anthology which is, he says, frivolous or aimed at the lifestyle or selfhelp markets. His complaint...
Literary responses
Edna St Vincent Millay
Thomas Hardy
(as reported by Elinor Wylie
) is believed to have said her poems were one of the only two great things in the United States, the other being the skyscraper.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
xiii, 290
To...
Literary responses
Toni Morrison
Maureen Howard
in the New Republic discerned a new lightness and brilliance in this novel and called it, despite its elements of fantasy, a highly realistic novel, full of the actual riddles, the unanswerable questions...
Literary responses
Dora Sigerson
Hardy
's preface addresses the unrealised potential of the dead writer: while the sketches are not unfinished in execution, their brevity leads a reader to muse on what the author's achievements in the same kind...
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
Boots
the chemist, which operated circulating libraries in its shops, refused to the stock this novel (as it already refused VH
's Sooner or Later) because of its alleged sensationalism.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
146-7
Secor, Marie. “Violet Hunt, Novelist: A Reintroduction”. English Literature in Transition, Vol.
Sewell Stokes
, in a brief portrait of VC
in 1928, described her as one who had at one time been accused of poisoning the purity of British homes with her sordid writings ....
Literary responses
Mary Webb
This exemplifies the double-edged nature of MW
's reputation. On the one hand she has become almost synonymous in the public mind with the genre she made famous: the romantic, earthy, rural novel. Her early...
Literary responses
Lucas Malet
Thomas Hardy
told LM
after reading this novel that she was one of the few authors of the other sex who are not afraid of logical consequences.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153
He also said that the wages of...
Literary responses
Sheila Kaye-Smith
This novel brought critical and popular acclaim. SKS
said that the weeks following its appearance were some of the happiest of her life.
Walker, Dorothea. Sheila Kaye-Smith. Twayne.
85
The Times Literary Supplement notice began: No matter what fine work...
Literary responses
Charlotte Mew
May Sinclair
thought Madeleine magnificent, having depths & depths of passion & of sheer beauty.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
191
She also enjoyed the high Victorian melodrama of Mew's reading aloud.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
192
Despite her efforts to bring The Farmer's...
Literary responses
John Oliver Hobbes
More recently, Margaret Maison
characterised The School For Saints as a strange mixture of Disraeli
, Hardy
, Ouida
, and Meredith
. . . and there are even echoes of the old bigamy novels...