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One of the literary world's great deceptions was perpetrated when Thomas Hardy wrote his Life in secret for publication after his death as an official biography. Since the true circumstances of its composition have been known The Early Life and Later Years of Thomas Hardy, published over the name of Florence Emily Hardy, has frequently been referred to as Hardy's autobiography. But this is not the whole truth: Florence altered much of what Hardy meant to appear in his 'biography'. Through careful examination of pre- publication texts, Michael Millgate has retrieved the text as it stood at the time of Hardy's final revision. For the first time The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy can be read as a true work of autobiography - an addition to the Hardy canon.
Thomas Hardy was the foremost novelist of his time, as well as an established poet. Author of Jude the Obscure and Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy reflected in his works the dynamics of social, intellectual and aesthetic change in nineteenth-century England. This guide provides students with a lucid introduction to Hardy's life and works and the basis for a sound comprehension of his work, including: the major aspects of Hardy's life in the context of contemporary culture a detailed commentary on Hardy's most important work and a critical map of Hardy's complete writing an outline of the vast body of criticism that has built up around Hardy's work with examples of recent critical debate. Exposition and guide, this volume enables readers to form their own readings of one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century.
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"Thomas Hardy was one of the great Victorian novelists - and also one of the great twentieth-century poets. This is the first of the many paradoxes he presents. He was a believer and an unbeliever, a socialist and a snob, an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; a driven man who ended his days in simplicity and serenity. Born in 1840, he could recall his grandmother telling him she was ironing her muslin frock when she first heard that the French queen's head had been cut off in the 1790s, yet he lived to know Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan." "He grew up in one of the most remote parts of the country, the son of a village builder and a girl who had gone into service as a child. His...
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Michael Millgate, one of the world's leading Hardy scholars adds 20 years' worth of new research to his classic biography. He presents new insights into Hardy's writing, his private life and his two marriages.
The poems of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) are key to understanding 19th, 20th and even 21st century poetry. This collection of fresh essays sheds new light on Hardy's poems--some of which have received little critical attention--from a variety of thematic and analytical approaches, offering a detailed picture of how his works are currently being read. The contributors discuss why Hardy's poetic genius is less and less overshadowed by his career as a novelist and highlight his passionate attention to small details, his delight in "noticing things" and his "eye for...mysteries."
First published in 1977, this concise and insightful study of the life and works of Thomas Hardy provides a thorough examination of Hardy's literary output. Alongside a brief biography of Hardy's life, Professor Page's study also spotlights his major and minor novels, his short stories, his non-fiction prose and his verse.
Thomas Hardy's greatness as a novelist and poet is universally acknowledged. These letters provide invaluable glimpses into his life, from the years as an unknown architect's assistant in London in the 1860s to the final period of extensive productivity in the relative isolation of Max Gate. The more than three hundred letters included here have been drawn from the recently completed seven-volume Clarendon Press edition of the Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, which was edited by Michael Millgate in collaboration with Richard L. Purdy. Although all aspects of Hardy's career are reflected, the selection particularly emphasizes his personal rather than his purely professional relationships: a...
The Guarded Life challenges some of the long-held views of Hardy - did he spend all his early life in preparation for his career as a writer, and did his novels really come a distant second to his poetry in his heart? In his personal life, did his first wife, Emma Hardy, really trick him into marriage and was she the ambitious women her enemies have painted her as being? And what of Florence, his second wife, who has so often been caricatured in her conflicted and passionate feelings for Hardy? By examining the relationships and contexts that shaped Hardy most - the women, the friendships and mentors, the social and family pressures, the career structures and the Dorsetshire landscape - The Guarded Life reveals the personality and emotional life of a public figure who has despite his fame remained until now largely obscure.