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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
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...
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
In LondonKT met the politician William Gladstone (a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland) at a party given for Charles Parnell .
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder.
328-9
On another occasion, she attended a garden-party given by feminist novelist...
Reception Lucy Walford
In 1887 Coventry Patmore said of LW that her depictions of contemporary life far surpassed those of Dickens , Thackeray , Trollope , Eliot , and Gaskell , declaring her work to be equalled only...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Augusta Ward
It is set in the late nineteenth-century on the boundary between Westmorland and Lancashire, an exquisite country
Ward, Mary Augusta. Helbeck of Bannisdale. Editor Worthington, Brian, Penguin.
86
whose landscape has a profound effect in the narrative. Alan Helbeck, of an old Catholic family...
Literary responses Sylvia Townsend Warner
Louis Untermeyer , an early supporter of STW 's poetry, commented favourably on her marked accent,half-modern, half-archaic blend of naivete and erudition, and the low-pitched but tart tone of voice.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “Editorial Materials”. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Collected Poems, edited by Claire Harman, Carcanet New Press, pp. xi - xxiii; 275.
xv
He also suggested...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
Nance is almost a colourless character apart from her capacity for passion. (In an apparently non-literary book, a tradition of steamy fiction is evoked when her desire to make Kitty sorry makes her think of...
Friends, Associates Rosamund Marriott Watson
She was introduced to writer Thomas Hardy some time in 1889. They had a flirtation (both in person and by letter) which left Hardy the disappointed partner,
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.
581
possibly after she rejected his advances in...
Textual Features Rosamund Marriott Watson
The title poem, which first appeared in the January 1889 issue of Harper's Magazine, reworks the familiar swan-maiden story.
Hughes, Linda K. “’Fair <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Hymen</span> holdeth hid a world of woes’: Myth and Marriage in Poems by ’Graham R. Tomson’ (Rosamund Marriott Watson)”. Victorian Poetry, Vol.
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, No. 2, pp. 97-120.
101
This poem (largely about forced marriage, possession, and broken promises) is narrated by an...
Textual Production Rosamund Marriott Watson
In 1894 RMW (as Graham R. Tomson) published in the American Independent two articles about Thomas Hardy , whom she had met in 1889.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.
581
He may have used her a couple of years...
Textual Features Rosamund Marriott Watson
In addition to poems from all her previous volumes, the book includes The Story of Marpessa, which first appeared in the Universal Review in September 1889. This poem is a critique of marriage adapted...
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.
36
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...
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
VW and Leonard travelled to Dorchester to have tea at Max Gate with Thomas and Florence Hardy . Woolf met Hardy just this once, though, as Hermione Lee remarks, she had been reading and writing...
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, 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, pp. 32-56.
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