The Achievement of Thomas Hardy

DOUGLAS DUNN Professor of English and Director of the Scottish Studies Institute, University of St Andrews JAMES GIBSON formerly Head of the English Field, Christ Church College, Canterbury SOPHIE GILMARTIN Lecturer in English, Royal Holloway College, University of London WILLIAM GREENSLADE Lecturer in Literary Studies, University of the West of England TIMOTHY HANDS Headmaster of Portsmouth Grammar School MICHAEL IRWIN Professor of English, University of Kent DANNY KARLIN Professor of English, University of St Andrews WILLIAM MORGAN Professor of English, Illinois State University CHARLES PETTIT Assistant County Librarian, Oxfordshire County Council MARY RIMMER Associate Professor of English, University of New Brunswick, Canada

They offer fresh reading of individual works - including his last novel, The Well-Beloved , and his first collection of verse, Wessex Poems - as well as exploring such central topics as the nature of storytelling, and the relations between poetry and song.'Now there is a clarity. There is the harvest of having written 20 novels first'. - Ezra Pound. The essays collected here range widely over Hardy's career as both a novelist and a lyric poet. They offer fresh reading of individual works - including his last novel, The Well-Beloved , and his first collection of verse, Wessex Poems - as well as exploring such central topics as the nature of storytelling, and the relations between poetry and song. Challenging, lucid and accessible, these essays provide new insight into the achievement of Thomas Hardy.