Thomas Hardy


Book Description

A portrait of the enigmatic nineteenth-century novelist and poet discusses his humble origins, rise through the London literary scene, and efforts to challenge the sexual and religious conventions of his time.




Hardy's Vision of Man


Book Description




Thomas Hardy


Book Description

Michael Millgate's classic biography of the great novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was first published in 1982. Much new information about Hardy has since become available, often in volumes edited or co-edited by Millgate himself, and many established assumptions have been challenged and revolutionized by scholarly research. In this extensively revised, fully reconsidered, and considerably expanded new edition the world's leading Hardy scholar draws not only upon these new materials but upon an exceptional understanding of Hardy gained from long immersion in the study of his life and work. Many large and small aspects of Hardy's life are here freshly illuminated, including his family background, his fumbling self-education as a poet, his difficult relations with his first wife and hers with his family, his sexual infatuations, his secret collaborations with aspiring women writers, his clandestine composition of his own official biography, and the memory-invoking techniques by which he sustained his remarkable creativity into extreme old age. Thorough, authoritative, and eminently readable, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited is now the standard life of Hardy for a new generation.







My Knowledge and My Memories of My Family


Book Description

This book is about what I remember about many members of my family and about the knowledge I obtained about them through various interviews and written sources, e.g., obituaries, newspapers, and articles I found on the Internet. The book follows a certain order. I describe what I remember about my immediate family members. I start off with my father then my mother and then my brotherthe only sibling I ever had. I then discuss my life with my ex-wife and her family and then the only child we ever had. I go on to another chapter, or maybe the third chapter, and talk about my paternal grandfathers family and as much of what I could remember about my maternal grandmothers family. I know and discovered more about the former than the latter. I enhanced my discussion throughout the book with as many pictures as I could gather. The book has pictures anywhere from one to about eighty years old. This, I thought, would make the book more interesting and lively. The book is replete with explanatory footnotes for those of certain generations or knowledge who may not understand or know of certain places, celebrities, cultural practices, and events. The entire book was prepared to relate to all who might read it in terms of family connections, their interest(s) in travel, history, sports, genealogy, and biography. I then talk about my maternal grandmothers family. It is relatively short because I did not know too many of them that well. The book covers mostly what I know and found out about my maternal grandfathers family. That is because it is the largest segment of my entire family. My father had no siblings, whereas my mother had about ten or eleven siblings, and all of them had children and grandchildren. I discovered a great deal more accomplishments in life on my mothers side as opposed to my fathers side of the family. I do not think the book is boring or particularly too long or too short. The book is a description of the life of the people whom I discuss and how I might have fitted into those lives.