From reviews of previous volumes: "Has the qualities that a great edition should have: it is meticulously thorough and accurate, and its aids to the reader are clear and comprehensive."--Times Literary Supplement. "An indispensable work of scholarship."--Nineteenth-Century Fiction. The correspondents in this volume range widely--from Edmund Gosse and Walter de la Mare to Ezra Pound--and the letters show an aging Hardy still deeply involved in all aspects of his professional life The nearly 700 letters, most of which have never been published, are supplemented by scrupulous annotation and extensive cross-referencing, by a chronology covering Hardy's entire career, and by an index of correspondents included in this volume.

The opening section of this seventh and final volume of the definitive edition of Thomas Hardy's letters covers the period from January 1926 to December 1927: his last letter, to Edmund Gosse, was written on Christmas Day 1927 and he died seventeen days later, on 11 January 1928. Although few of his long-standing personal correspondences were actively kept up during these last two years of his life, Hardy maintained (especially when writing to Sir Frederick Macmillan) a lively and practical interest in all aspects of his work and career; he also responded, usually with a courteous refusal, to the many requests and enquiries that his fame inevitably attracted. The second section is devoted to letters which became available too late for publication in their correct chronological sequence in earlier volumes of the edition; those now added date mostly from the nineteenth century, and include a series of letters to officials of the Duchy of Cornwall about the purchase of land on which Max Gate was built, as well as numerous individual letters of considerable interest and importance. This volume contains more than 350 letters, the great majority of them previously unpublished, which are supplemented, as before, by scrupulous annotation and extensive cross-referencing; by a chronology covering the whole of Hardy's career; and by an index of recipients of the letters included. As the concluding volume, however, it also incorporates an extensive General Index covering the texts and annotations of the entire edition.

The Open Book is a provocative study of literary influence at work in English writing from Hardy to Woolf. Jensen reimagines the links between text and context as she endeavors to historicize literary influence, by taking Bloomian 'anxiety' and Kristevan 'intertextuality' into fields of actual history and biography. Jensen both borrows from and deconstructs the ideas of these theorists as she reads the texts of Hardy, Stephen, Woolf, Mansfield, and Middleton Murry. By doing so, The Open Book offers a fresh and pragmatic opening onto the relation between personal, cultural and institutional history on the one hand, and literary history on the other.

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."

A collection of poems reflecting Thomas Hardy's tumultuous marriage to Emma Gifford. In many of his poems, the great Dorset poet and novelist Thomas Hardy referred to a certain romantic courtship, a marriage which became progressively more problematical, and finally to a bereavement in which a man loses his wife. So, who was Hardy writing about? The clue is to be found in his early poems, where the names of several locations in North Cornwall are mentioned, this being the very same place which featured in Hardy’s courtship of Emma Gifford, who was to become his first wife. The poems raise certain questions. Given that Hardy and Emma gradually drifted apart so that in the end they lived mainly separate lives, albeit under the same roof, why was he so grief-stricken when she died, bearing in mind that their marriage was so unsatisfactory? How did Hardy cope as he passed through the various stages of grief, which he articulated so poignantly and expressively in his poems? These stages are recognized today, thanks to the work of Swiss-US psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and US expert on grieving and loss, David Kessler. Finally, how did Hardy survive and come out the other side, and can his experience be a guide to others who find themselves alone and bereft after losing their partner?

As a writer who achieved major eminence in both fiction and poetry and whose engagement with these genres encompassed the period of transition from Victorianism to Modernism, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) enjoys a unique position in English Literary History. Michael Millgate, University Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Toronto is widely recognized as the world's foremost Thomas Hardy scholar. His contributions to the study of Hardy over more than three decades include his recently 'revisited' biography, the seven volume edition of Hardy's collected letters, and the influential critical study Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist. In Thomas Hardy Reappraised, editor Keith Wilson pays tribute to Millgate's many contributions to Hardy studies by bringing together new work by fifteen of the world's most eminent Hardy scholars. These essays address questions of biblical and literary allusiveness, cultural, historical, and philosophical context, narrative and poetic theory and practice, as well as Hardy's place in the modern world and his influence on younger writers. Together, the contributors offer one of the most significant reappraisals of Hardy's work to have appeared since Michael Millgate helped to transform Hardy studies. They offer graphic testimony to Hardy's enduring popularity and importance. Contributors: Pamela Dalziel Mary Rimmer Dennis Taylor Barbara Hardy U.C. Knoepflmacher Marjorie Garson Ruth Bernard Yeazell Simon Gatrell J. Hillis Miller George Levine Jeremy V. Steele William W. Morgan Samuel Hynes Norman Page W. J. Keith

A History of Modernist Literature offers a critical overview of modernism in England between the late 1890s and the late 1930s, focusing on the writers, texts, and movements that were especially significant in the development of modernism during these years. A stimulating and coherent account of literary modernism in England which emphasizes the artistic achievements of particular figures and offers detailed readings of key works by the most significant modernist authors whose work transformed early twentieth-century English literary culture Provides in-depth discussion of intellectual debates, the material conditions of literary production and dissemination, and the physical locations in which writers lived and worked The first large-scale book to provide a systematic overview of modernism as it developed in England from the late 1890s through to the late 1930s

Drawing on aspects of Foucauldian feminist theory Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent offers original and detailed readings of six critically under-valued novels: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved , demonstrating Hardy's peculiarly modern appreciation of how individuals negotiate the forces which shape their sense of self. Tracing his interest in the evolutionary debate and the woman question this book reveals a new politically engaged rather than a grimly pessimistic Hardy.