This work comprises a collection of the poetic works of Thomas Hardy. Hardy's poetry spanned over 50 years from the last half of the 19th century to the period after World War I, and ranges from pessimistic works to those which were witty and fanciful.

A compilation of the nineteenth-century English writer's poems features previously uncollected works including epigraphs, Domicilium, and songs from The Dynasts

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.

This unique and meticulously edited collection of Thomas Hardy's greatest works includes:_x000D_ Novels:_x000D_ Under the Greenwood Tree_x000D_ Far from the Madding Crowd_x000D_ The Return of the Native_x000D_ The Mayor of Casterbridge_x000D_ The Woodlanders_x000D_ Tess of the d'Urbervilles_x000D_ Jude the Obscure_x000D_ A Pair of Blue Eyes_x000D_ The Trumpet-Major_x000D_ Two on a Tower_x000D_ The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid_x000D_ The Well-Beloved_x000D_ Desperate Remedies_x000D_ The Hand of Ethelberta_x000D_ A Laodicean_x000D_ Short Stories:_x000D_ Wessex Tales_x000D_ An Imaginative Woman_x000D_ The Three Strangers_x000D_ The Withered Arm_x000D_ Fellow-Townsmen_x000D_ Interlopers at the Knap_x000D_ The Distracted Preacher_x000D_ Life's Little Ironies_x000D_ The Son's Veto_x000D_ For Conscience' Sake_x000D_ A Tragedy of Two Ambitions_x000D_ On the Western Circuit_x000D_ To Please His Wife_x000D_ The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion_x000D_ A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four_x000D_ The Fiddler of the Reels_x000D_ A Few Crusted Characters_x000D_ Tony Kytes, the Arch-deceiver_x000D_ The History of the Hardcomes_x000D_ The Superstitious Man's Story_x000D_ Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk_x000D_ Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician_x000D_ Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir_x000D_ The Winters and the Palmleys_x000D_ Incident in Mr. Crookhill's Life_x000D_ Netty Sargent's Copyhold_x000D_ A Group of Noble Dames_x000D_ The First Countess of Wessex_x000D_ Barbara of the House of Grebe_x000D_ The Marchioness of Stonehenge_x000D_ Lady Mottisfont_x000D_ The Lady Icenway_x000D_ Squire Petrick's Lady_x000D_ Anna, Lady Baxby_x000D_ The Lady Penelope_x000D_ The Duchess of Hamptonshire_x000D_ The Honourable Laura_x000D_ A Changed Man and Other Tales_x000D_ Other Stories_x000D_ Drama:_x000D_ The Dynasts_x000D_ Poetry Collections:_x000D_ Wessex Poems and Other Verses_x000D_ Poems of the Past and the Present_x000D_ Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses_x000D_ Satires of Circumstance_x000D_ Moments of Vision_x000D_ Late Lyrics and Earlier_x000D_ Other Works:_x000D_ The Dorsetshire Labourer_x000D_ The Rev. William Barnes, B.D._x000D_ The Science of Fiction_x000D_ The Profitable Reading of Fiction_x000D_ Candour in English Fiction and more

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

"A masterful portrait" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) from a Whitbread Award-winning biographer, and author of A Life of My Own. The novels of Thomas Hardy have a permanent place on every booklover's shelf, yet little is known about the interior life of the man who wrote them. A believer and an unbeliever, a socialist and a snob, an unhappy husband and a desolate widower, Hardy challenged the sexual and religious conventions of his time in his novels and then abandoned fiction to reestablish himself as a great twentieth-century lyric poet. In this acclaimed new biography, Claire Tomalin, one of today's preeminent literary biographers, investigates this beloved writer and reveals a figure as rich and complex as his tremendous legacy.