The Life And Work Of Thomas Hardy

One of the literary world's great deceptions was perpetrated when Thomas Hardy wrote his Life in secret for publication after his death as an official biography. Since the true circumstances of its composition have been known The Early Life and Later Years of Thomas Hardy, published over the name of Florence Emily Hardy, has frequently been referred to as Hardy's autobiography. But this is not the whole truth: Florence altered much of what Hardy meant to appear in his 'biography'. Through careful examination of pre- publication texts, Michael Millgate has retrieved the text as it stood at the time of Hardy's final revision. For the first time The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy can be read as a true work of autobiography - an addition to the Hardy canon.

Michael Millgate's classic biography of the great novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was first published in 1982. Much new information about Hardy has since become available, often in volumes edited or co-edited by Millgate himself, and many established assumptions have been challenged and revolutionized by scholarly research. In this extensively revised, fully reconsidered, and considerably expanded new edition the world's leading Hardy scholar draws not only upon these new materials but upon an exceptional understanding of Hardy gained from long immersion in the study of his life and work. Many large and small aspects of Hardy's life are here freshly illuminated, including his family background, his fumbling self-education as a poet, his difficult relations with his first wife and hers with his family, his sexual infatuations, his secret collaborations with aspiring women writers, his clandestine composition of his own official biography, and the memory-invoking techniques by which he sustained his remarkable creativity into extreme old age. Thorough, authoritative, and eminently readable, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited is now the standard life of Hardy for a new generation.

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.

Hardy's beliefs are endorsed in his own works - whether poetry or prose, his compassion is what lends it greatness. The full appreciation of his work depends on an understanding of his life - they are so inextricably intertwined that they must be treated together. With the refined estimation of an expert, Halliday gives a introduction to Hardy's anguished soul and brilliant work.

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.

Thomas Hardy's greatness as a novelist and poet is universally acknowledged. These letters provide invaluable glimpses into his life, from the years as an unknown architect's assistant in London in the 1860s to the final period of extensive productivity in the relative isolation of Max Gate. The more than three hundred letters included here have been drawn from the recently completed seven-volume Clarendon Press edition of the Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, which was edited by Michael Millgate in collaboration with Richard L. Purdy. Although all aspects of Hardy's career are reflected, the selection particularly emphasizes his personal rather than his purely professional relationships: ample representation is therefore given to his correspondence with his family, with his two wives, and with such close friends as Edmund Gosse and Florence Henniker. Many other notable figures are also addressed, among them Walter de la Mare, Millicent Fawcett, Harley Granville Barker, Ezra Pound, Marie Stopes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Virginia Woolf. The full and immediately accessible annotations to individual letters are supplemented by editorial commentaries designed to place particular letters or sequences of letters within the broader contexts of Hardy's life and literary career. The volume also includes a brief introduction, a chronology, and an index.

Through original essays from a distinguished team of international scholars and Hardy specialists, A Companion to Thomas Hardy provides a unique, one-volume resource, which encompasses all aspects of Hardy's major novels, short stories, and poetry Informed by the latest in scholarly, critical, and theoretical debates from some of the world's leading Hardy scholars Reveals groundbreaking insights through examinations of Hardy’s major novels, short stories, poetry, and drama Explores Hardy's work in the context of the major intellectual and socio-cultural currents of his time and assesses his legacy for subsequent writers