The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy PDF
Preview The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy
THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS HARDY Also by Michael Mil/gate WILLIAM FAULKNER AMERICAN SOCIAL FICTION: JAMES TO COZZENS THE ACHIEVEMENT OF WILLIAM FAULKNER THOMAS HARDY: HIS CAREER AS A NOVELIST THE COLLECTED LEITERS OF THOMAS HARDY (Co-editor with Richard L. Purdy) THOMAS HARDY: A BIOGRAPHY THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS HARDY by THOMAS HARDY Edited by Michael Millgate An edition on new principles of the materials previously drawn upon for The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 184o-18f)1 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy 1892-1928 published over the name of Florence Emily Hardy Introduction © Michael Millgate 1984 Editorial matter and remaining text © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1984 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1984 Reprinted (with corrections 1989) Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2 1 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hardy, Thomas, I84o-1g28 The Life and work of Thomas Hardy. I. Fiction in English. Hardy, Thomas, 184o-1928 Biographies I. Title II. Millgate, 192rr 823'.8 ISBN 978-0-333-46167-9 ISBN 978-1-349-10117-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10117-7 Contents List of Illustrations Vll Acknowledgements Vlll INTRODUCTION X EDITORIAL PROCEDURES XXX A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS XXXVll THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS HARDY Part 1: Early Life and Architecture 5 Part II: Novels-to Illness 83 Part III: Illness, Novels, and Italy 147 Part IV: Between Town and Country 205 Part V: "Tess", ''Jude", and the End of Prose 253 Part VI: Verse, to the End of "The Dynasts" 307 Part VII: "Time's Laughingstocks" and "Moments of Vision" 365 Part VIII: Life's Decline 41 1 Conclusion (by Florence Emily Hardy) 443 Appendices (as included by Florence Emily Hardy) 483 TEXTUAL APPARATUS 493 Abbreviations 494 Editorial Emendations in the Copy-texts 495 Selected Post-Hardyan revisions in Early Life and Later rears 500 Texual Notes 530 Biographical Index 545 v List of Illustrations 1. Thomas Hardy, aged I6. From a photograph by Pouncy (Dorchester) . 2. Thomas Hardy's birthplace, Higher Bockhampton. From a drawing made by Hardy himself. 3· Thomas Hardy, aged 2 I. From a photograph by Bowen & Carpenter (Kilburn). 4· Emma Lavinia Gifford (afterwards Mrs Thomas Hardy), I87o. 5· Jemima Hardy, I876. From a photograph by Pouncy. 6. Thomas Hardy, senior, I877. From a photograph by W. G. Lewis (Bath). 7· Thomas Hardy, circa I88o. From a photograph by Frederick Hollyer. 8. Max Gate, when first built. 9· Thomas Hardy's study, about I900. From a photograph by the Revd Thomas Perkins. IO. Thomas Hardy, circa I908. From a photograph by Walter Barnett. I 1. Thomas Hardy, I9I3. From a photograph by Olive Edis. I2. Florence Emily Dugdale (afterwards Mrs Thomas Hardy), I9IO. From a drawing by William Strang, R.A. I3. Thomas and Florence Hardy at Max Gate, I9I4. From a photograph by E. 0. Hoppe. I4. Max Gate, from the lawn, I9I9. I5. Thomas Hardy, aged 8o. From a photograph by Walter Thomas. I6. Florence Hardy, circa I927. From a photograph probably by Swaine. VII Ackno"'ledgentents I wish to thank the Trustees of the Estate of the late Miss E. A. Dugdale for permission to quote from the letters ofThomas Hardy and Florence Emily Hardy, Sir Christopher Cockerell for permission to quote from his father's letters and diaries, and the following private owners and public institutions for making manuscripts available to me: Mr Frederick B. Adams, Mr Richard L. Purdy, the British Library, Colby College Library, the National Library of Scotland, and theN ew York Public Library. I am especially grateful to the Curator and Trustees of the Dorset County Museum for granting access during many years to the rich Hardy materials over which they preside and to the Macmillan Press Ltd for allowing me to edit a work of which it owns the copyright. I am also happy to acknowledge, once again, the assistance received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, directly through minor research grants administered by the University of Toronto, indirectly through the Council's long-standing and generous support of my work as co-editor of The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. My personal debts are also numerous: to Dr Marjorie Garson, Miss Lesley Mann, Dr Gary Harrington, and Dr Keith Lawson, for research assistance of various kinds; to Mrs Freda Gough, for her excellent typing; to Dr Richard H. Taylor, for the valuable ground-clearing work embodied in his edition of The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy; and to friends and colleagues-notably Mr John Antell, Dr C.J. P. Beatty, Professor Michael Collie, the late Mr Francis Dalton, Professor Henry Gifford, Mr Robert Gittings, Mr Desmond Hawkins, Mr David Holmes, Professor Heather Jackson, Professor W. J. Keith, Mr Roger Peers, Mr Richard L. Purdy, Mr Michael Rabiger, Professor J. M. Robson, Mrs Lillian Swindall, and the late Mr Malcolm Tomkins-for much help and advice. I owe, as always, a unique debt, at once personal and professional, to my wife, Jane Millgate, and I take viii Acknowledgements IX pleasure in paying a special tribute to Mr and Mrs T. W.Jesty for their enthusiastic and extremely productive participation in the preparation of the biographical index to the present volume. Toronto M.M. Introduction On 30 November 1919 Florence Emily Hardy, Thomas Hardy's second wife, wrote to Sir Frederick Macmillan about a "manu script" in three copies, one of which Sir Frederick had offered to keep in his safe. She explained that she was anxious to complete final revision of the work, since her health was poor and she feared that, should anything happen to her, the copies of the manuscript at Max Gate "might possibly be destroyed" and the labour of "nearly four years" irrecoverably lost.1 It seems safe to assume that the manuscript in question was in fact the typescript of the work which the Macmillan firm subsequently published over Mrs Hardy's name as The Early Life of Thomas Hardy I84o--1891 (London, 1928) and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy 1892-1928 (London, 1930) and which has come to be generally referred to as the "Life". Presumably, too, this is the typescript of which three copies are still extant, in complete or fragmentary form, in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester: any deposit in Sir Frederick's safe can only have been temporary. Describing this material in his Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study, first published in 1954, Richard L. Purdy made it abundantly clear-as, indeed, he had already done in a paper delivered in 19 40-that although the two volumes were published as the work ofFlorence Hardy they had been very largely written by Hardy himself. 2 In the years since the revelation of the true circumstances surrounding the composition of the "Life" there has been an understandable interest in the question of just how extensive Florence Hardy's participation actually was. And that question has assumed a new importance with the growing tendency among Hardy critics and biographers to speak of the work as an autobiography-a straightforward, unmediated presentation of the image of himself and his work that Hardy wished to project into the future, on beyond the moment of his death. Obviously such an image is presented, but neither straightforwardly nor without mediation. If the "Life" is to be read as autobiography it begins to X
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