Thomas Hardy’s Vision of Wessex

280 Pages·2003·4.893 MB·English

by  Simon Gatrell (auth.)

Thomas Hardy’s Vision of
Wessex
Simon Gatrell
Thomas Hardy’s Vision of Wessex
Thomas Hardy’s Vision
of Wessex
Simon Gatrell
University of Georgia
© Simon Gatrell, 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-74834-3
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ISBN 978-1-349-41127-6 ISBN 978-0-230-50025-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230500259
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gatrell, Simon.
Thomas Hardy’s vision of Wessex/Simon Gatrell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928—Settings. 2. Hardy, Thomas,
1840–1928—Knowledge—Wessex (England) 3. Regional literature,
English—History and criticism. 4. Wessex (England)—In
literature. 5. Country life in literature. I. Title.
PR4757.S46G37 2003
823′.8—dc21 2003049764
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
To Michael Millgate
Contents
Preface viii
List of Illustrations xi
Introduction xii
1 The Conception and Birth of Wessex 1
2 Variations on the Original Theme 27
3 The First Evolutionary Leap 45
4 Tess of the d’Urbervilles 61
5 Handling New Wessex 91
6 The Collected Editions 1 112
7 The Collected Editions 2 140
8 The Poetry 164
9 Cider, Mead and Ale 188
10 Sounds 195
11 The Languages of Wessex 202
12 Wessex Rail 226
13 Conclusion: Politics, Guides and Critics 234
Notes 244
Index of Place Names 256
General Index 260
vii
Preface
An important note to the reader
In its original conception this book was to have included all revisions that
Hardy made to the various aspects of Wessex. This was found to be econom-
ically unviable, and instead much of the material will be found at a website
associated with the book: http//www.english.uga.edu/Wessex. Many of the
endnotes direct the reader to the website for further information, and
indeed the arguments in the book are now supported by only the essential
minimum of illustration. The website has three levels, all of which may be
accessed from the front page. The first responds directly to the book’s end-
notes, and also has a full list of books consulted; the second includes a range
of secondary material relevant to details of Wessex discussed in the book;
the third is an archive listing almost all (to claim completeness would be
folly) the revisions Hardy made in his fiction to aspects of Wessex (for the
poetry the reader should consult Samuel Hynes’s edition, details of which
are given in the following section). I welcome lists of errors on the website,
for though I have striven to exclude them, they are surely there. Please send
them to me at [email protected].
Texts
Hardy’s work is quoted, unless otherwise indicated, in its first edition form,
with variants where relevant in bold face, since it is with the first serial and
book appearance, and variants from them, that I am concerned. Prose
quotations are identified by volume (v), book or part number and chapter
(c, where necessary) number, except where indicated. Three-decker novels
often had a separate numeration of chapters in each volume. There will be
found on the website a key that will allow readers to adjust the chapter
numbers for one-volume reference. Poetry quotations are from The Complete
Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy Vols I–V, edited by Samuel Hynes (1982–95).
Abbreviations
The most important of these refer to the website. In the notes, references are
in this form: ws followed by an abbreviation for each chapter. Users should
follow the instructions on the front page of the website: http//www.english.
uga.edu/Wessex.
viii
Preface ix
The following books are also abbreviated for economy of reference:
Bibliographical Study: Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study, R L Purdy
(Second edition, 1968).
DCM: Documents in the Hardy collection in the Dorset County Museum.
I am grateful to the curator for permission to quote from the collection.
Hardy in History: Hardy in History: A Study in Literary Sociology, Peter
Widdowson (1989).
Hardy the Creator:Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography, Simon Gatrell (1988).
Letters:The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy edited by Richard Little Purdy
and Michael Millgate, vol. I–VII (1978–88). An eighth and supplementary
volume will appear soon.
Life and Work: The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy edited by Michael
Millgate (1984).
Proper Study:Thomas Hardy and the Proper Study of Mankind, Simon Gatrell
(1993).
Thanks
This book is a product of more than thirty years’ work on Hardy’s texts, and
owes something to everyone I have talked with about Hardy during that
period, in Oxford, Coleraine, Dorchester, Athens, and elsewhere, and to the
people who have helped me at all the libraries I have visited. I am deeply
grateful to you all. But there are some whose influence and friendship has
been perpetual, and others who have helped with issues specific to this
book, and I must let them know how important they have been.
Michael Millgate is the Hardy scholar, and has been a good and generous
friend to me from our first meeting. Bill and Vera Jesty used to live at Max
Gate, the splendid house that Hardy built, and they have given me not just
the extraordinary experience of sleeping in the room in which Hardy wrote
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, but their company on many walks around Dorset,
and the benefit of their huge knowledge of the past and present of Wessex.
Many of the ideas fleshed out here were first floated in talks with them. It
has been wonderful to share all this with such good friends. Pamela Dalziel’s
scholarship is an inspiration, and her friendship a resource. During the long
gestation of the material that underpins this study Dale Kramer was in a
sense my partner; he and I worked together on two different proposals for
complete critical editions of Hardy’s fiction, and both times it was not his
fault that the projects fell through. Discussion and argument with Dale have
made the issues of Hardy’s texts come alive for me. Peter Shillingsburg’s gift
has been to stimulate me to think harder and faster and more clearly on
textual (and all other) matters when I am in his company; I only hope some
of that strength and clarity has lasted long enough. The two curators of the
Dorset County Museum I have worked with, Roger Peers and Richard de
x Preface
Peyer, have in their different ways, and under different conditions, made
the Hardy collection in the museum a site of pure pleasure; Lillian Swindall
was very helpful throughout my specific work on this book. The University
of Georgia has been wonderfully supportive, and I have been blessed with a
remarkable series of graduate students who have worked on Hardy with me
here; each of them has contributed something significant: Jane Gatewood,
Sarah Dangelantonio, Frank Mitchell, Russ Greer and Mark Rollins – and to
their names I must add that of Kathy Agar. Without the encouragement of
Nelson Hilton, the idea of the website that has made the whole project
viable would never have got off the ground, and without Alice Kinman’s
hands-on assistance it would never have seen the light of the screen. Adam
Parkes has read parts of the manuscript, a piece of work only less valuable to
me than our common enthusiasm for cricket and football. Without the love
and encouragement of Tita and Clym neither this nor any other of my work
would have seen the light of day.
Simon Gatrell
December 2002
List of Illustrations
1. Illustration that Hardy drew to ‘In a Ewelease Near
Weatherbury’ in Wessex Poems (1898). xii
2. Hardy’s map for the first edition of
The Return of the Native (1878). 29
3. Alfred Parsons’s illustration for ‘Wessex Folk’(1891). 91
4. The first map of Wessex, from the Bookman (1891). 94
5. Map of Wessex in Annie Macdonnell’s
Thomas Hardy (1894). 101
6. The map of Wessex made for the Osgood,
McIlvaine collected edition of Hardy’s work (1895). 113
7. The Raeburn illustration for Desperate Remedies. 116
8. The Raeburn illustration for Under the Greenwood Tree. 117
9. The Raeburn illustration for A Pair of Blue Eyes. 120
10. The Raeburn illustration for Far From the Madding Crowd. 122
11. The Raeburn illustration for The Hand of Ethelberta. 126
12. The Raeburn illustration for The Return of the Native. 127
13. The Raeburn illustration for The Trumpet-Major. 130
14. The Raeburn illustration for A Laodicean. 132
15. The Raeburn illustration for Two on a Tower. 134
16. The Raeburn illustration for The Mayor of Casterbridge. 135
17. The Raeburn illustration for The Woodlanders. 137
18. The Raeburn illustration for Wessex Tales. 140
19. The Raeburn illustration for A Group of Noble Dames. 143
20. The Raeburn illustration for Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 144
21. The Raeburn illustration for Life’s Little Ironies. 151
22. The Raeburn illustration for Jude the Obscure. 153
23. The Raeburn illustration for The Well-Beloved. 154
24. The revised Wessex map for the publication
ofA Changed Man in the Wessex edition (1914). 162
25. Edmund New’s map of South Wessex for Thomas
Hardy’s Wessex (1902). 237
xi