This study examines Hardy's prolonged struggle with his contemporary readers, whose bourgeois values he despised. Initially content to compromise, to provide them with congenial entertainment, Hardy resorted at first to strategies of subversion, smuggling material past his editors and finally to outspoken attack. T.R. Wright attempts to balance historical research into the response of "actual" readers and the material conditions of publishing with literary-critical analysis of the "implied" reader inscribed in the novels themselves.

Often regarded as cinematic in their scope and power, the novels of Thomas Hardy have inspired some of the most absorbing adaptations of fiction for the big screen. This collection of essays by prominent international Hardy scholars explores both successful and unsuccessful attempts to transfer Hardy's novels to the screen. It provides a fascinating illustrated history of the interpretation and recreation of Hardy's work, from the silent era to television. The essays highlight the challenging nature of Hardy's work, which finds its most powerful reflection in films by controversial directors...

The Bible, as Wright's book demonstrates, plays a key role in nearly all D. H. Lawrence's work. It supplies not only the inspiration but on occasion the target for his parody. After considering the extraordinary range of Lawrence's reading, Wright engages in a theoretically informed but clear exploration of the textual dynamics of Lawrence's writing. His writing is seen to reveal a prolonged struggle to read the Bible in a much broader spirit than that encouraged by orthodox Christianity.

The Religion of Humanity, first expounded by the founder of Positivism, Auguste Comte, focused the minds of a wide range of prominent Victorians on the possibility of replacing Christianity with an alternative religion based on scientific principles and humanist values. This new book traces the impact of Comte's 'religion' on Victorian Britain, showing how its ideas were championed by John Stuart Mill and George Henry Lewes before being institutionalised by Richard Congreve and Frederic Harrison, the leaders of the two main centres of Positivist worship. Widely discussed by scientists,...

The Bible, as Wright's book demonstrates, plays a key role in nearly all D. H. Lawrence's work. It supplies not only the inspiration but on occasion the target for his parody. After considering the extraordinary range of Lawrence's reading, Wright engages in a theoretically informed but clear exploration of the textual dynamics of Lawrence's writing. His writing is seen to reveal a prolonged struggle to read the Bible in a much broader spirit than that encouraged by orthodox Christianity.