Wessex did not spring full-born from Hardy's imagination when he began to write. The first part of the book reveals in detail how Wessex became what it is, geographically, socially and culturally, beginning with his fist poem in the 1860s and ending with Winter Words, his last collection of verse. The second (briefer) part is an account of the impact of Hardy's vision of Wessex on twentieth-century English culture, offering an explanation for Hardy's endurance as a popular novelist.

This book is about some of the ways in which the world got ready to be connected, long before the advent of the technologies and the concentrations of capital necessary to implement a global 'network society'. It investigates the prehistory not of the communications 'revolution' brought about by advances in electronic digital computing from 1950 onwards, but of the principle of connectivity which was to provide that revolution with its justification and rallying-cry. Connectivity's core principle is that what matters most in any act of telecommunication, and sometimes all that matters, is the fact of its having happened. During the nineteenth century, the principle gained steadily increasing traction by means not only of formal systems such as the telegraph, but of an array of improvised methods and signalling devices. These methods and devices fulfilled not just an ever more urgent need, but a fundamental recurring desire, for near-instantaneous real-time communication at a distance. Connectivity became an end in itself: a complex, vivid, unpredictable romance woven through the enduring human desire and need for remote intimacy. Its magical enhancements are the stuff of tragedy, comedy, satire, elegy, lyric, melodrama, and plain description; of literature, in short. The book develops the concepts of signal, medium, and interface to offer, in its first part, an alternative view of writing in Britain from George Eliot and Thomas Hardy to D.H. Lawrence, Hope Mirrlees, and Katherine Mansfield; and, in its second, case-studies of European and African-American fiction, and of interwar British cinema, designed to open the topic up for further enquiry.

This book reads Hardy's poetry of the rural as deeply rooted in the historical tradition of the pastoral mode even as it complicates and extends it. It shows that in addition to reinstating the original tensions of classical pastoral, Hardy dramatizes a heightened awareness of complex communities and the relations of class, labour, and gender.

Utopias and the Environment explores the way in which the kind of ‘dreaming’, or re-visioning, known as the ‘utopian imaginary’ takes environmental concerns into account. This kind of creative intervention is increasingly important in an era of ecological crisis, as we witness the failure of governments worldwide to significantly change industrial civilization from a path of ‘business as usual.’ In this context, it is up to the artists – in this case authors – to imagine new ways of being that respond to this imperative and immediate global issue. Concurrently, it is also up to critics, readers, and thinkers everywhere to appraise these narratives of possibility for their complexities and internal conflicts, as well as for their promise, as we enter this new era of rapid change and adaptation. Because creative and critical thinkers must work together towards this goal, the idea of the critical utopia, coined by Tom Moylan in response to the fiction of the 1970s, is now ingrained in the common argot and is one of the key ideas discussed in this book. This development in the genre, which combines self-reflexivity and multiple perspectives within its dreaming, represents the postmodern spirit in its most regenerative aspect. This book is testament to such hopes and potential realities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Green Letters.

The new Rough Guide to England is the definitive insider's guide to a country rich in history, heritage and culture. Now in full colour throughout, this fully updated guide has clear maps, detailed itineraries and regional highlights. Now available in PDF format. There's practical information and advice on visiting England's beautiful countryside and coastline, as well as the many diverse cities, towns and picture-postcard villages. Don't miss a thing with up-to-date reviews of the best places to stay, from boutique hotels to budget hostels, the most authentic pubs and new-on-the-scene restaurants, and the most exciting activities and experiences. Whether you're camping on a remote Cornish peninsula, hiking in the Peak District, being pampered in a spa town or browsing markets in London's East End, explore every corner of this superb country with easy-to-use maps and detailed sights information. Make the most of your time on EarthTM with The Rough Guide to England.

This is a book about a longstanding network of writers and writings that celebrate the aesthetic, socio-political, scientific, ecological, geographical, and historical value of trees and tree spaces in the landscape; and it is a study of the effect of this tree-writing upon the novel form in the long nineteenth century. Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel identifies the picturesque thinker William Gilpin as a significant influence in this literary and environmental tradition. Remarks on Forest Scenery (1791) is formed by Gilpin’s own observations of trees, forests, and his New Forest home specifically; but it is also the product of tree-stories collected from ‘travellers and historians’ that came before him. This study tracks the impact of this accumulating arboreal discourse upon nineteenth-century environmental writers such as John Claudius Loudon, Jacob George Strutt, William Howitt, and Mary Roberts, and its influence on varied dialogues surrounding natural history, agriculture, landscaping, deforestation, and public health. Building upon this concept of an ongoing silvicultural discussion, the monograph examines how novelists in the realist mode engage with this discourse and use their understanding of arboreal space and its cultural worth in order to transform their own fictional environments. Through their novelistic framing of single trees, clumps, forests, ancient woodlands, and man-made plantations, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Thomas Hardy feature as authors of particular interest. Collectively, in their environmental representations, these novelists engage with a broad range of silvicultural conversation in their writing of space at the beginning, middle, and end of the nineteenth century. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and academics working in the environmental humanities, long nineteenth-century literature, nature writing and environmental literature, environmental history, ecocriticism, and literature and science scholarship.

First published in 1940 and revised in 1965, this work by the distinguished Hardy Scholar, Carl J. Weber, traces Hardy’s literary career from High Brockhampton to the grave in Poet’s corner, Westminster Abbey. Using a multitude of letters, it explains why Thomas Hardy wrote, and how his books grew from ideas, emotions and experiences to the printed volumes that have delighted the world. This book will be of interest to those studying the works of Thomas Hardy and 19th century literature.

Haunted Selves, Haunting Places in English Literature and Culture offers a series of readings of poetry, the novel and other forms of art and cultural expression, to explore the relationship between subject and landscape, self and place. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach grounded in close reading, the text places Jacques Derrida’s work on spectrality in dialogue with particular aspects of phenomenology. The volume explores writing and culture from the 1880s to the present day, proceeding through four sections examining related questions of identity, memory, the landscape, and our modern relationship to the past. Julian Wolfreys presents a theoretically informed understanding of the efficacy of literature and culture in connecting us to the past in an affective and engaged manner.

This ebook collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Novels: Under the Greenwood Tree Far from the Madding Crowd The Return of the Native The Mayor of Casterbridge The Woodlanders Tess of the d'Urbervilles Jude the Obscure A Pair of Blue Eyes The Trumpet-Major Two on a Tower The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid The Well-Beloved Desperate Remedies The Hand of Ethelberta A Laodicean Short Stories: Wessex Tales An Imaginative Woman The Three Strangers The Withered Arm Fellow-Townsmen Interlopers at the Knap The Distracted Preacher Life's Little Ironies The Son's Veto For Conscience' Sake A Tragedy of Two Ambitions On the Western Circuit To Please His Wife The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four The Fiddler of the Reels A Few Crusted Characters Tony Kytes, the Arch-deceiver The History of the Hardcomes The Superstitious Man's Story Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir The Winters and the Palmleys Incident in Mr. Crookhill's Life Netty Sargent's Copyhold A Group of Noble Dames The First Countess of Wessex Barbara of the House of Grebe The Marchioness of Stonehenge Lady Mottisfont The Lady Icenway Squire Petrick's Lady The Lady Penelope The Duchess of Hamptonshire The Honourable Laura A Changed Man and Other Tales Other Stories Drama: The Dynasts Poetry Collections: Wessex Poems and Other Verses Poems of the Past and the Present Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses Satires of Circumstance Moments of Vision Late Lyrics and Earlier Other Works: The Dorsetshire Labourer The Rev. William Barnes, B.D. The Science of Fiction The Profitable Reading of Fiction ... Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism.