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The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy
One of the literary world's great deceptions was perpetrated when Thomas Hardy wrote his Life in secret for publication after his death as an official biography. Since the true circumstances of its composition have been known The Early Life and Later Years of Thomas Hardy, published over the name of Florence Emily Hardy, has frequently been referred to as Hardy's autobiography. But this is not the whole truth: Florence altered much of what Hardy meant to appear in his 'biography'. Through careful examination of pre- publication texts, Michael Millgate has retrieved the text as it stood at the time of Hardy's final revision. For the first time The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy can be read as a true work of autobiography - an addition to the Hardy canon.
- GenresNonfictionBiography
641 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Thomas Hardy
2,791 books7,046 followersThomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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June 20, 2020
Have you ever taken an author tour? If you have the time and inclination, a professional guide can really enhance your knowledge and appreciation of a favorite author's works. Walking the old haunts of an author and seeing the towns he lived in and wrote about, touring his home and looking out the windows he gazed from as he wrote can create a wonderful feeling of kinship with that writer. My wife and I took a three-day Thomas Hardy Tour in southwestern England three years ago. I wish that I had read this book beforehand. I'm sure our tour guide Frances read to us from it - I remember two stories from it about Hardy's dog Wessex that she told us during our time at Max Gate, his last home, outside Dorchester.
Thomas Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928. His first inclination as a young man was to enter the church. He had misgivings about his calling, and became an architect, specializing in - churches! He was an avid reader, and began to write poetry. He tried his hand at novels, which began selling, and he gave up architecture. He wrote in the Realist School of writers, and became one of the best known authors of his time. His books include "Tess of the Durbervilles", "Jude the Obscure" and "Far From the Madding Crowd". (My favorites are "The Return of the Native", "Two on a Tower" and "The Woodlanders".) Many of his novels were translated into multiple languages during his day, and some became plays; "Tess" was made into an opera.
"Tess" and "Jude" were extremely controversial and attacked because of their "immoral" content and thinly-veiled criticism of the Christian church and its beliefs. The attacks on "Tess" and Hardy were a tremendous strain on his first marriage. His wife was already uncomfortable with the book, and its cold reception only confirmed her worst fears, driving a wedge between her and Thomas. When "Jude" was criticized even more vehemently, Hardy set aside novels for good, and happily returned to poetry. His novels had sold well, "Tess" and "Jude" no doubt helped by their controversies, and he no longer needed a steady income.
I was surprised to learn that Hardy didn't seem to be particularly proud of being a novelist. Poetry was always his first love - he said it occupied the "supreme place in literature". But poets don't give up their day jobs. His novels paid the bills. He felt more relieved than satisfied when he finished writing many of his books, especially because they were typically written on a tight schedule, going into magazines as serials, before being published in book form. His great fear had been that popular taste (and thus publishers' tastes) might divert him toward "society" novels out of economic necessity. Fortunately for all of us, that did not eventuate, and we are left with a treasure trove of stories about common country men and women, to whom very uncommon things happen.
That is my greatest fascination with Hardy - his fascination with Fate. He said "... human nature must never be made abnormal, which is introducing incredibility. The uncommonness must be in the events, not in the characters, and the writer's art lies in shaping that uncommonness while disguising its unlikelihood...". Though I love most of Hardy's stories, I believe some of the plots did struggle with credibility in places because of his obsession with the random and often cruel and ironic hand of fate. In this autobiography he expounds further on fate: "The will of a man is... neither wholly free nor wholly unfree. When swayed by the Universal will... he is not individually free...".
This brings us to his philosophy and his view on God. (Disclaimer: I am a Christian.). My biggest takeaway from the book, which was largely a refresher course after our tour, is that Hardy was a philosopher. I suppose all artists have something of a philosophy, but in his reading and his musings, his prose and his poetry, he was consciously developing and expounding a philosophy. Truths were what he sought. He spent much of his time contemplating the metaphysical. In his discourses, he wrote of "The Amoral Creator" in whom there rested neither good nor evil. And of man he wrote that "...humans are of no matter or appreciable value in this nonchalant universe.'' Contextually that idea should be understood to have been written during the horrors of World War I. In responses to charges of atheism and heresy, etc., his tone always seems to me to be that of attempting to trim down the vast chasm separating his beliefs and Christianity. I imagine these attacks troubled a man whose extended family had been formally invested in the church, as evidenced by his lifelong habit of returning for church services, as if he was glancing sideways at God.
Hardy had always officially declined to write a memoir. It is seen that he was hedging his bets, however, as he kept immaculate dated notes. Eventually it became clear that others were going to write his life story anyway, and if he had learned anything, it was that others are not likely to understand your ideas and motives. So in his later years he began organizing and dictating a cohesive recount of his life to his first wife Emma, and later to his second wife Florence. He apparently felt that because his notes were dated, he would write his own story in exact chronological order. Logical. However, as a reader, since the notes bounce from topic to random topic, it makes for very choppy reading. I would imagine it could even dissuade many readers, other than true Hardyophiles, from completing the book. It would probably be a better book if it had been organized by subject matter, rather than slavishly adhering to dates.
On his 81st birthday, Hardy received a written tribute from a group of over one hundred younger writers. As a lover of Hardy, I was moved by their words: "In your novels and poems you have given us a tragic vision of life which is informed by your knowledge of character, and relieved by the charity of your humor and sweetened by your sympathy with human suffering and endurance. We have learned from you that the proud heart can subdue the hardest fate, even in submitting to it... In all that you have written you have shown the spirit of man, nourished by tradition and sustained by pride, persisting through defeat."
Thomas Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928. His first inclination as a young man was to enter the church. He had misgivings about his calling, and became an architect, specializing in - churches! He was an avid reader, and began to write poetry. He tried his hand at novels, which began selling, and he gave up architecture. He wrote in the Realist School of writers, and became one of the best known authors of his time. His books include "Tess of the Durbervilles", "Jude the Obscure" and "Far From the Madding Crowd". (My favorites are "The Return of the Native", "Two on a Tower" and "The Woodlanders".) Many of his novels were translated into multiple languages during his day, and some became plays; "Tess" was made into an opera.
"Tess" and "Jude" were extremely controversial and attacked because of their "immoral" content and thinly-veiled criticism of the Christian church and its beliefs. The attacks on "Tess" and Hardy were a tremendous strain on his first marriage. His wife was already uncomfortable with the book, and its cold reception only confirmed her worst fears, driving a wedge between her and Thomas. When "Jude" was criticized even more vehemently, Hardy set aside novels for good, and happily returned to poetry. His novels had sold well, "Tess" and "Jude" no doubt helped by their controversies, and he no longer needed a steady income.
I was surprised to learn that Hardy didn't seem to be particularly proud of being a novelist. Poetry was always his first love - he said it occupied the "supreme place in literature". But poets don't give up their day jobs. His novels paid the bills. He felt more relieved than satisfied when he finished writing many of his books, especially because they were typically written on a tight schedule, going into magazines as serials, before being published in book form. His great fear had been that popular taste (and thus publishers' tastes) might divert him toward "society" novels out of economic necessity. Fortunately for all of us, that did not eventuate, and we are left with a treasure trove of stories about common country men and women, to whom very uncommon things happen.
That is my greatest fascination with Hardy - his fascination with Fate. He said "... human nature must never be made abnormal, which is introducing incredibility. The uncommonness must be in the events, not in the characters, and the writer's art lies in shaping that uncommonness while disguising its unlikelihood...". Though I love most of Hardy's stories, I believe some of the plots did struggle with credibility in places because of his obsession with the random and often cruel and ironic hand of fate. In this autobiography he expounds further on fate: "The will of a man is... neither wholly free nor wholly unfree. When swayed by the Universal will... he is not individually free...".
This brings us to his philosophy and his view on God. (Disclaimer: I am a Christian.). My biggest takeaway from the book, which was largely a refresher course after our tour, is that Hardy was a philosopher. I suppose all artists have something of a philosophy, but in his reading and his musings, his prose and his poetry, he was consciously developing and expounding a philosophy. Truths were what he sought. He spent much of his time contemplating the metaphysical. In his discourses, he wrote of "The Amoral Creator" in whom there rested neither good nor evil. And of man he wrote that "...humans are of no matter or appreciable value in this nonchalant universe.'' Contextually that idea should be understood to have been written during the horrors of World War I. In responses to charges of atheism and heresy, etc., his tone always seems to me to be that of attempting to trim down the vast chasm separating his beliefs and Christianity. I imagine these attacks troubled a man whose extended family had been formally invested in the church, as evidenced by his lifelong habit of returning for church services, as if he was glancing sideways at God.
Hardy had always officially declined to write a memoir. It is seen that he was hedging his bets, however, as he kept immaculate dated notes. Eventually it became clear that others were going to write his life story anyway, and if he had learned anything, it was that others are not likely to understand your ideas and motives. So in his later years he began organizing and dictating a cohesive recount of his life to his first wife Emma, and later to his second wife Florence. He apparently felt that because his notes were dated, he would write his own story in exact chronological order. Logical. However, as a reader, since the notes bounce from topic to random topic, it makes for very choppy reading. I would imagine it could even dissuade many readers, other than true Hardyophiles, from completing the book. It would probably be a better book if it had been organized by subject matter, rather than slavishly adhering to dates.
On his 81st birthday, Hardy received a written tribute from a group of over one hundred younger writers. As a lover of Hardy, I was moved by their words: "In your novels and poems you have given us a tragic vision of life which is informed by your knowledge of character, and relieved by the charity of your humor and sweetened by your sympathy with human suffering and endurance. We have learned from you that the proud heart can subdue the hardest fate, even in submitting to it... In all that you have written you have shown the spirit of man, nourished by tradition and sustained by pride, persisting through defeat."
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