Volumes IV and V of the Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy, which complete the edition, contain all of his dramatic works in verse. In addition to the two major dramas--The Dynasts and The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall--these volumes include Hardy's versions of two folk-pieces and the rustic operetta "O Jan, O Jan, O Jan" (here published for the first time).

Thomas Hardy has generally been viewed as an intensely private figure, shy of publicity and even of people. What the present volume reveals is that Hardy's public utterances, addressed to a wide range of literary, social, and political issues, were far more numerous and various than has previously been imagined. His essays, speeches, and other acknowledged pieces, both formal and informal, are here fully described, edited, and annotated, together with the letters he wrote to newspapers and the many unsigned items, from obituaries to clandestine contributions to literary gossip-columns, that...

Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order the book publicly burned. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he never wrote a work of fiction again.
Rich in symbolism, Jude the Obscure is the story of Jude Fawley and his struggle to rise from his station as a poor Wessex stonemason to that of a scholar at Christminster. It is also the story of...

Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy's passionate tale of the beautiful, headstrong farmer Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, firmly established the thirty-four-year-old writer as a popular novelist. According to Virginia Woolf, "The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which . . . must hold its place among the great English novels." Introducing the fictional name of "Wessex" to describe Hardy's legendary countryside, this early masterpiece draws a vivid...

Backgrounds and Contexts provides a useful "Glossary of Dialect Words" as well as four essays on the textual and publication history of the novel--including pieces by Simon Gatrell and Andrew Nash--all of which are newly included. Also included are six of Hardy's nonfiction writings on the dialect in the novel, the reading of fiction, and his correspondence, five of which are new to this edition Criticism provides a selection of contemporary reviews that suggestThe Return of the Native's initial reception as well nine of the most influential modern essays on the novel, by Gillian...

Hardy's hand-drawn map of Wessex and the manuscript title page for the first edition of his novel are also included Hardy and the Novel includes seven poems by Hardy that provide greater insight into his ethos; selections from Michael Millgate's biography of Hardy that depict the relationship between episodes inTess of the D'Urbervilles and events in the author's life; and excerpts from Grindle and Gatrell's introduction to the 1983 edition that discuss Hardy's revision process in both manuscripts and early printed editions of the novel. Criticism features three contemporary reviews...

"Backgrounds and Contexts" provides new and invaluable source material on Victorian Dorset and, in particular, Dorchester, Hardy's native home and the town upon whichCasterbridge is based. Included are six of Hardy's nonfiction writings, notably excerpts from his essay "The Dorsetshire Laboure" (1883), in which he frankly comments on the social changes he has witnessed in the county. Hardy's Wessex is further examined in an essay by Michael Millgate, by maps of Casterbridge and Wessex, and by a key to local place names. Christine Winfield discusses the novel's manuscript and its...

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it, throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts at newness there. To restore the grey carcases of a...