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Woman Much Missed

Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy, and Poetry

Mark Ford author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:13th Jul '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Woman Much Missed cover

Woman Much Missed is the first book-length study of the many poems (over 150) that Thomas Hardy composed in the wake of the death of his first wife Emma in November of 1912. Mark Ford uses these poems to develop a narrative of their four-year courtship on the remote and romantic coast of Cornwall where they met, and then follows Thomas's poetic recreation of the slow degeneration of their marriage and their embittered final decade. Ford shows how Emma's writings and experiences during this time were fundamental to Thomas's evolution into both a best-selling novelist and into one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Although for over a decade the marriage between Thomas and Emma had been troubled, and indeed Emma spent much time during her final years secluded in her attic rooms above his study, her death stimulated him to write some of the greatest elegies in English. Twenty-one of these, including masterpieces such as 'The Voice' (which opens 'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me') and 'After a Journey' were collected in 'Poems of 1912-13'. While these have received much attention and are often read by school pupils and university students alike, his numerous other poems about Emma have only rarely been discussed. Ford corrects this oversight, providing accessible and insightful readings from a poet's perspective.

Ford's close reading of Hardy's poetry and his analysis of many of his influences and sources is impressive. There's a wealth of fascinating material in this book. * Harriet, Shiny New Books *
[O]utstanding: admirably concise but rich in the meticulous close reading at which Ford excels...Mark Ford sets it all out - the necromantic poet, his much-missed wife, and her "shy, pliant, star-struck" but no less ghost-ridden understudy - without ever passing judgement, except on the poetry. Compassionate, intelligent and supremely tactful, this is the deeply humane book all three deserve. * TLS *
The clarity and vigor of Ford's prose, supplemented with a judicious and selective amount of criticism, ensure that the book will be accessible to a broad readership. Ford's volume makes a major contribution to the study of Hardy's poetry...Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * Choice *
Ford's work is humane in its recognition that a history of love, estrangement, remorse, and too-long postponed efforts at reconciliation, hurt Hardy into poetry. It is intelligent (and, indeed, equally humane) in its alertness to writing's exploratory impulse and transforming process. * Ralph Pite, The Review of English Studies *
Paying homage to Hardy, Robert Frost seized on a vital quality: 'He has planted himself on the wrongs that can't be righted.' Emma's death is one such wrong, and in Woman Much Missed Mark Ford weaves together the life and poetry without reducing one to the other and offers a fine-grained analysis of their relationship and its bearing on Hardy's work. Moving from his depictions of Emma's life before they met to their courtship and marriage, to her death and its aftermath, Ford's is the first book-length study of what he calls 'the entire corpus of Emma poems'. * Matthew Bevis, London Review of Books *

  • Winner of TLS Books of the Year 2023, selected by Andrew Motion New Statesmen Books of the Year 2023, selected by William Boyd.

ISBN: 9780192886804

Dimensions: 220mm x 142mm x 20mm

Weight: 472g

272 pages