Short Stories of Thomas Hardy


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Thomas Hardy


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Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own words, half a Londoner. Focusing on the formative five years in his early twenties when Hardy lived in the city, but also on his subsequent movement back and forth between Dorset and the capital, Mark Ford shows that the Dorset-London axis is critical to an understanding of his identity as a man and his achievement as a writer. Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner presents a detailed account of Hardy’s London experiences, from his arrival as a shy, impressionable youth, to his embrace of radical views, to his lionization by upper-class hostesses eager to fête the creator of Tess. Drawing on Hardy’s poems, letters, fiction, and autobiography, it offers a subtle, moving exploration of the author’s complex relationship with the metropolis and those he met or observed there: publishers, fellow authors, street-walkers, benighted lovers, and the aristocratic women who adored his writing but spurned his romantic advances. The young Hardy’s oscillations between the routines and concerns of Dorset’s Higher Bockhampton and the excitements and dangers of London were crucial to his profound sense of being torn between mutually dependent but often mutually uncomprehending worlds. This fundamental self-division, Ford argues, can be traced not only in the poetry and fiction explicitly set in London but in novels as regionally circumscribed as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.




The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Realisms


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The essays in this volume trace the experimentation of nineteenth-century writers in advancing new modes of realist fiction while revitalizing the inheritance of the Gothic and the Romantic. Focusing on some of the most popular novels of the century (Northanger Abbey, Jayne Eyre, Dombey and Son, Middlemarch, Far from the Madding Crowd and Germinal), this attractive volume explores some of the recurring themes in nineteenth-century fiction: aspiration and vocation; social class; sexual politics; political reform; colonialism and commerce. This is an ideal introduction to some of the major fictional achievements of the first industrial era, and to most of the crucial themes in nineteenth-century fiction.




The Biography Book


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From Marilyn to Mussolini, people captivate people. A&E's Biography, best-selling autobiographies, and biographical novels testify to the popularity of the genre. But where does one begin? Collected here are descriptions and evaluations of over 10,000 biographical works, including books of fact and fiction, biographies for young readers, and documentaries and movies, all based on the lives of over 500 historical figures from scientists and writers, to political and military leaders, to artists and musicians. Each entry includes a brief profile, autobiographical and primary sources, and recommended works. Short reviews describe the pertinent biographical works and offer insight into the qualities and special features of each title, helping readers to find the best biographical material available on hundreds of fascinating individuals.




The Nineteenth-century Novel


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This text explores the scope and variety of the great novels of the 19th century. The essays in this collection trace the experimentation of 19th-century writers in advancing new modes of realist fiction.




Thomas Hardy’s ‘Facts’ Notebook


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Within weeks of Thomas Hardy’s return to his native Dorchester in June 1883, he began to compile his ’Facts’ notebook, which he kept up throughout the years when he was writing some of his major work - The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. From his intensive study of the Dorset County Chronicle for 1826-1830, he noted and summarised into 'Facts' (with the help of his first wife, Emma) hundreds of reports, many of them suggestive 'satires of circumstance', for possible use in his fiction and poems. Along with extensive reading in memoirs and local histories, this immersion in the files of the old newspaper involved him in a wider experience - the recovery and recognition of the unstable culture of the local past in the post-Napoleonic war years before his birth in 1840, and before the impact of the modernising of the Victorian era. 'Facts' is thus a unique document amongst Hardy's private writings and is here for the first time edited, the text transcribed in 'typographical facsimile' form, together with substantial annotation of the entries and critical and textual introductions.




The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy


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Thomas Hardy's fiction has had a remarkably strong appeal for general readers for decades, and his poetry has been acclaimed as among the most influential of the twentieth century. His work still creates passionate advocacy and opposition. The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy is an essential introduction to this most enigmatic of writers. These commissioned essays from an international team of contributors comprises a general overview of all Hardy' s work and specific demonstrations of Hardy's ideas and literary skills. Individual essays explore Hardy's biography, aesthetics, his famous attachment to Wessex, and the impact on his work of developments in science, religion and philosophy in the late nineteenth century. Hardy's writing is also analysed against developments in contemporary critical theory and issues such as sexuality and gender. The volume also contains a detailed chronology of Hardy's life and publications, and a guide to further reading.




Woman Much Missed


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Woman Much Missed is the first book-length study of the many poems (over 150) that Thomas Hardy composed in the wake of the death of his first wife Emma in November of 1912. Mark Ford uses these poems to develop a narrative of their four-year courtship on the remote and romantic coast of Cornwall where they met, and then follows Thomas's poetic recreation of the slow degeneration of their marriage and their embittered final decade. Ford shows how Emma's writings and experiences during this time were fundamental to Thomas's evolution into both a best-selling novelist and into one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Although for over a decade the marriage between Thomas and Emma had been troubled, and indeed Emma spent much time during her final years secluded in her attic rooms above his study, her death stimulated him to write some of the greatest elegies in English. Twenty-one of these, including masterpieces such as 'The Voice' (which opens 'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me') and 'After a Journey' were collected in 'Poems of 1912-13'. While these have received much attention and are often read by school pupils and university students alike, his numerous other poems about Emma have only rarely been discussed. Ford corrects this oversight, providing accessible and insightful readings from a poet's perspective.




C. Day-Lewis: The Golden Bridle


Book Description

C. Day-Lewis was a major figure in British poetry and culture from the 1930s until his death in 1972. The Golden Bridle: Selected Prose takes its title from the myth of Bellerophon and the golden bridle of Pegasus, which Day-Lewis invoked on several occasions as a metaphor for the creative process. Day-Lewis as poet is, then, the organizing idea of this anthology, and the selections indicate the scope and range of his vital engagement with English life and letters. Organised into four parts, the volume illustrates Day-Lewis's reflections on the role and function of poetry in society and culture; the creative process and the workings of the imagination as well as the nature of poetic truth and its relation to science; poets who were of particular importance to Day-Lewis; and the poetic process in relation to the composition of several of his own poems. The notes indicate the particular source, circumstances, and central issues of each piece, to provide a brief intellectual biography and critical account of this eminent poet's development and standing.




Critical Essays on Thomas Hardy's Poetry


Book Description

This collection of critical essays on the poetry of English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy covers Hardy and the art of poetry, Hardy and other poets, and a detailed views of specific texts. Includes an introduction addressing the relationship between Hardy's life and his poetry.