The second volume (1930) of a fascinating account of Hardy's life, compiled by him in collaboration with his second wife.

Based on contemporary notes, letters, diaries, and biographical memoranda, as well as from oral information in conversations extending over many years.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was a major English poet and novelist; his works, often set in the fictional county of Wessex, are memorable for their realism and criticism of social constraints. This book, the first volume of a two volume selected collection of his works, includes ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’, ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, ‘The Return of the Native’, ‘The Trumpet-Major’ and ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’.

Explains the social reasons for Thomas Hardy's consistent pessimism expressed in all his major works. The author contends that this came from the failure of bourgeois society to correct the anachronisms in the social machinery of the day.

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, the most controversial of Hardy’s works as it toes the line between Victorian and modernism literature. As an author who lived to see both literary time settings, Hardy was often criticized during his lifetime for combining elements of realism and fantastic coincidences. Moreover, The Mayor of Casterbrige was Hardy’s attempt at using poetic techniques and psychology to create a more in-depth, psychological story. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Hardy’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

In The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy, some of the most prominent Hardy specialists working today offer an overview of Hardy scholarship and suggest new directions in Hardy studies. The contributors cover virtually every area relevant to Hardy's fiction and poetry, including philosophy, palaeontology, biography, science, film, popular culture, beliefs, gender, music, masculinity, tragedy, topography, psychology, metaphysics, illustration, bibliographical studies and contemporary response. While several collections have surveyed the Hardy landscape, no previous volume has been composed especially for scholars and advanced graduate students. This companion is specially designed to aid original research on Hardy and serve as the critical basis for Hardy studies in the new millennium. Among the features are a comprehensive bibliography that includes not only works in English but, in acknowledgment of Hardy's explosion in popularity around the world, also works in languages other than English.

From folk ballads to film scripts, this new five-volume encyclopedia covers the entire history of British literature from the seventh century to the present, focusing on the writers and the major texts of what are now the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. In five hundred substantial essays written by major scholars, the Encyclopedia of British Literature includes biographies of nearly four hundred individual authors and a hundred topical essays with detailed analyses of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions whose impact upon the writing or the reading of literature was significant. An ideal companion to The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, this set will prove invaluable for students, scholars, and general readers. For more information, including a complete table of contents and list of contributors, please visit www.oup.com/us/ebl

'... Thomas Hardy's Personal Writings is an informative book, and a superlatively well-edited one. Professor Orel has been generous in his inclusions, meticulous in his texts, and thorough in his annotations. Anything that one is likely to want to read of Hardy's occasional prose is here, and what is not here is carefully described in an annotated appendix. The book takes it place at once with Richard Purdy's bibliography as a standard, useful, trustworthy work in the library of essential Hardy scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement '... these essays certainly deserve to be much better known.' Raymond Williams, Guardian