Two Hardy Studies

Abstract

ROCEEDING FROM STUDIES of Donne and Swift, Miss Evelyn Hardy has precipitated her talents on Thomas Hardy.' One dimension her portrait clearly shows-length; others are more nebulous. Perhaps Miss Hardy does not strike out far or in deep simply because, as she states in first sentence of her introduction, the biographer of Thomas Hardy and critic of his work is both blessed and cursed with a mass of material concerning Not only did Hardy himself produce mightily and variously, but since his death in 1928 there has been an unremitting tide of volumes and essays about him. Very wisely, Miss Hardy has chosen from this mass of material three principal sources for her book: all Hardy's major and most of his minor work, two biographical volumes published under name of Florence Emily Hardy, and conscientious study of Hardy's writings by Dr. William R. Rutland (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I938). She has also read other modern interpreters as various as Vere H. Collins, Edmund Blunden, Carl J. Weber, Albert Guerard, and Lord David Cecil; to latter her volume is dedicated. And she has made modest use of Max Gate books and papers available in Dorset County Museum, manuscript of The Return of Native, and a portion of rough draft of The Dynasts, all offering fresh evidence for biographer. Out of this material, Miss Hardy has created a pedestrian and generally sensible biography, but it is far from being definitive, or even throughly critical. She seems to accept innocent fiction that second Mrs. Hardy produced her biography from written notes