This biography contains new disclosures and interpretations of evidence, neglecting nothing significant in Hardy's early years or his later life. It draws from innumerable sources, including all his published writings (not least the poems), biographies of him and of contemporaries, correspondence of friends and acquaintances, Emma Hardy's diaries, and many unpublished letters from her and Florence Hardy, and brief background introductions indicate how some of Hardy's friends influenced his career or enriched his life.

A portrait of the enigmatic nineteenth-century novelist and poet discusses his humble origins, rise through the London literary scene, and efforts to guard his privacy.

Palgrave Advances in Thomas Hardy Studies explores the key issues in the ongoing and lively debate about Thomas Hardy's work as a novelist and poet. In twelve newly-commissioned essays, distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic review, take issue with and take forward the most recent and significant research on Thomas Hardy.

In the mid- late 1800s and early 1900s, Thomas Hardy produced a plethora of eclectic works that were considered too candid and even sacrilegious for their time. Hardy's publishing of fiction, drama, poetry, and the short story ranks him with Shakespeare, one of few other authors in the English language to write major works in more than one literary genre. Growing up, Hardy apprenticed as an architect but soon realized his true calling was writing. He based much of his work on his homeland and local culture in England, creating the fictional county of Wessex, the setting for most of his works. This companion explores the life of Hardy, examining his career and most important works. Ideal for high school and undergraduate students, as well as readers with a general interest in Hardy's life and works, this book takes a close look at Hardy's unconventional works and why he ultimately decided to abandon novel-writing in favor of his first love-poetry.

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?

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.

This sourcebook offers an introduction to Thomas Hardy's crucial novel, offering: a contextual overview, a chronology and reprinted contemporary documents, including a selection of Hardy's poems an overview of the book's early reception and recent critical fortunes, as well as a wide range of reprinted extracts from critical works key passages from the novel, reprinted with editorial comment and cross-referenced within the volume to contextual and critical documents suggestions for further reading and a list of relevant web resources. For students on a wide range of courses, this sourcebook offers the essential stepping-stone from a basic reading knowledge to an advanced understanding of Hardy's best-known novel.

In this, the first book-length study of astronomy in Hardy's writing, historian of science and literary scholar Pamela Gossin brings the analytical tools of both disciplines to bear as she offers unexpected and sophisticated readings of seven novels that enrich Darwinian and feminist perspectives on his work, extend formalist evaluations of his achievement as a writer, and provide fresh interpretations of enigmatic passages and scenes. In an elegantly crafted introduction, Gossin draws together the shared critical values and methods of literary studies and the history of science to articulate a hybrid model of scholarly interpretation and analysis that promotes cross-disciplinary compassion and understanding within the current contention of the science/culture wars. She then situates Hardy's own deeply interdisciplinary knowledge of astronomy and cosmology within both literary and scientific traditions, from the ancient world through the Victorian era. Gossin offers insightful new assessments of A Pair of Blue Eyes, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Two on a Tower, The Woodlanders, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure, arguing that Hardy's personal synthesis of ancient and modern astronomy with mythopoetic and scientific cosmologies enabled him to write as a literary cosmologist for the post-Darwinian world. The profound new myths that comprise Hardy's novel universe can be read as a sustained set of literary thought-experiments by which he critiques the possibilities, limitations, and dangers of living out the storylines that such imaginative cosmologies project for his time - and ours.

Thomas Hardy was the foremost novelist of his time, as well as an established poet. This guide provides students with a lucid introduction to Hardy's life and works and the basis for a sound comprehension of his work.

A systematic exploration of Thomas Hardy's imaginative assimilation of particular Victorian sciences, this study draws on and swells the widening current of scholarly attention now being paid to the cultural meanings compacted and released by the nascent 'sciences of man' in the nineteenth century. Andrew Radford here situates Hardy's fiction and poetry in a context of the new sciences of humankind that evolved during the Victorian age to accommodate an immense range of literal and figurative 'excavations' then taking place. Combining literary close readings with broad historical analyses, he explores Hardy's artistic response to geological, archaeological and anthropological findings. In particular, he analyzes Hardy's lifelong fascination with the doctrine of 'survivals,' a term coined by E.B. Tylor in Primitive Culture (1871) to denote customs, beliefs and practices persisting in isolation from their original cultural context. Radford reveals how Hardy's subtle reworking of Tylor's doctrine offers a valuable insight into the inter-penetration of science and literature during this period. An important aspect of Radford's research focuses on lesser known periodical literature that grew out of a British amateur antiquarian tradition of the nineteenth century. His readings of Hardy's literary notebooks disclose the degree to which Hardy's own considerable scientific knowledge was shaped by the middlebrow periodical press. Thus Thomas Hardy and the Survivals of Time raises questions not only about the reception of scientific ideas but also the creation of nonspecialist forms of scientific discourse. This book represents a genuinely new perspective for Hardy studies.