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.
Kennedy shifts gears in this work to focus on a young girl's experience in learning about life and love. She foregrounds this theme by means of a quotation from Thomas Hardy
's Tess of the...
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...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jolley
EJ
invoked as an appropriate description of her own motivation, Flaubert
's dictum that writing comes from an inner wound.
Joussen, Ulla. “An Interview with Elizabeth Jolley”. Kunapipi, Vol.
15
, No. 2, pp. 37-43.
40
She said of Johnson
's Rasselas and Goethe
's Elective Affinities (both of which...
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin.
xi,187
Intertextuality and Influence
Kathleen Jamie
In the third section the transcendental is a frequent presence. (Even in the first, Lepidoptery was about collecting, and pinning by the wings, not butterflies but angels.) Now in a number of markedly topical poems...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Storm Jameson
Jameson briefly praises the writings of Mansfield
, Conrad
, Hardy
, and James
, along with Willa Cather
and Sinclair Lewis
. However, she concentrates her study on the way other Georgian authors have...
Intertextuality and Influence
P. D. James
As the work opens, Cordelia, slight of body, determined of will, savvy of mind
Gidez, Richard. P. D. James. Twayne.
56
(who is to reappear later in another book, The Skull Beneath the Skin), is running a seedy detective agency...
Intertextuality and Influence
Violet Hunt
Acquainted with Andrew Lang
through her mother
's social circle, VH
shaped her own poetry under his influence. Partly because of Lang's connections, her romantic poem The Death of the Shameful Knight was published in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Violet Hunt
VH
was fascinated by the mysterious throughout her life. As a small girl, she loved to listen to her mother talk about the White Lady, a spirit haunting the kitchen of Margaret Hunt
's...
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.
Through this experience she met the literary biographer Robert Gittings
. She built with him a professional partnership to work on interpretations of John Keats
and Thomas Hardy
, of whom Gittings was writing biographies...
Friends, Associates
Laurence Hope
LH
met Thomas Hardy
, who was an admirer of her literary work.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.