The women in Thomas Hardy's novels appear to have no control over their destiny. Rosemarie Morgan argues a contrary case, and restores to them the physical, sexual reality denied them by the male dominated world they inhabit.

The manuscript of Hardy's first great novel Far From the Madding Crowd vanished shortly after its first publication. Rediscovered in 1918 it sheds remarkable new light on the whole of Hardy's work. The manuscript pages, some of which are reproduced here in facsimile, reveal Hardy's original composition in the novel, and the reluctantly 'cancelled words' which were the result of a long struggle with Sir Leslie Stephen, Hardy's editor. Cancelled Words reveals the manner in which Hardy worked, his resistance to censorship, his obsessive attention to detail and precision, and the often concealed...