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阅读哈代 Thomas Hardy在诗海的作品!!! | |
哈代Hardy，Thomas(1840-06-02，多塞特郡多切斯特～1928-01-11，多切斯特的麦克斯门)。
英国作家。
生平 16岁开始做建筑学徒，后为建筑师助理，司教堂修复。建筑论文曾获英国皇家建筑学会奖。有音乐、绘画及语言才能，通古希腊文及拉丁文。在哲学、文学和自然科学方面有广博学识。受当时科学重大发现进化论影响，在宗教方面成为怀疑论者。25岁写诗，1866年开始小说创作，第一部小说《穷人与贵妇》未出版。随后创作了一部以爱情、阴谋、凶杀、侦破为内容的情节小说《计出无奈》，出版后受到肯定性评价。1874年与爱玛·拉文纳结婚。在爱玛的鼓励下，连续创作了《绿林荫下》、《一双湛蓝的秋波》、《远离尘嚣》。《远离尘嚣》一书以清新自然的风格和鲜明生动的人物形象获得极大成功，他从此放弃建筑行业，走上专业创作道路。从1869年至19世纪末近30年间，共创作长篇小说14部、中短篇小说近50篇。小说创作辍笔后，将早年诗作汇集成册，并继续诗歌及诗剧创作，直至逝世。
创作 哈代的小说以他所生长生活的英格兰西南部地区为背景，富有浓重的地方色彩。他将这些小说大体分为3类：性格与环境的小说、罗曼史与幻想的小说和精于结构的小说。其中以第一类最为重要。属于此类的长篇小说有《绿林荫下》、《远离尘嚣》、《还乡》、《卡斯特桥市长》、《林居人》、《德伯家的苔丝》、《无名的裘德》。一般认为它们是哈代思想、艺术上最成熟的作品，其中又以悲剧故事《德伯家的苔丝》和《无名的裘德》最为杰出。前者写贫苦美丽的挤奶女工苔丝因年轻无知而失身于富家恶少亚雷·德伯，受尽精神上和物质上的煎熬，最后失去自己真心爱恋的安玑·克莱，悲愤绝望之中，杀死亚雷，坦然走上绞架。后一部小说写贫苦善良的孤儿裘德·范立奋发自学欲赴高等学府深造，但无入门之道。他与志趣相投的表妹淑·布莱德赫双双摆脱法定配偶而自由结合，但为社会所排斥，流浪街头，最后家破人亡。这些作品表现了时代的先进思想，向维多利亚时代旧有习俗观念和制度提出严正挑战，在当时遭到非议。他的性格与环境的小说，大多是通过描述男女主人公一生的奋斗、追求、幻灭，反映人对美好生活和理想的追求，以及在此过程中人与环境(包括人与人之间)的剧烈冲突，因而富有广泛深刻的社会意义和哲理。属于罗曼史与幻想的小说，大致包括《一双湛蓝的秋波》、《司号长》、《塔中恋人》、《意中人》，侧重描绘以浪漫爱情为主要内容的人生图景。精于结构的小说有《计出无奈》、《埃塞贝妲的婚事》、《冷淡女子》等。在这类作品中，哈代着意进行了小说结构技巧方面的实验，从中可以看出哈代在小说创作过程中所作的多方面探索和尝试，以及他与当时流行的自然主义、新浪漫主义潮流的联系。后两类作品的思想主题往往也与性格与环境的小说相通，而且更加富有理想主义色彩，其中也不乏既引人入胜，又发人深省的佳作。他的中短篇小说，或嘲讽世事人生，或探索心理活动，或记述浪漫传奇。其中如《三怪客》等，已跻入世界中短篇小说佳作之林。哈代小说风格多变，题材广泛，内容丰富。他因在小说创作上所取得的突出成就而成为英国19世纪后期的代表作家。
哈代作为诗人，也颇有声誉。1898～1928年，他共出版8部近千首短诗，包括《威塞克斯诗集》、《今昔之歌》、《时间的笑柄》、《环境的讽刺》、《幻觉的瞬间》、《中晚期抒情诗》、《人性面面观》、《晚岁之歌》，其中包括感怀诗、哲理诗、爱情诗、咏物诗、讽刺诗、战争诗、悼亡诗等等。他还创作了两部诗剧《列王》和《康沃尔王后的著名悲剧》。哈代的诗冷峻、深刻、细腻、优美，言简意赅，自成一格，较他的小说更具有现代意识。诗剧《列王》是哈代思想艺术集大成之佳作。它以拿破仑战争为题材，囊括了欧洲与战争有关的种种地区和场所，出场人数达数百人。它属于不供演出用的案头剧，气势宏伟，语言优美，运用无韵诗、有韵诗及散文3种文体形式。哈代凭借战争进程中的各个重要环节，进一步深入阐发了他已往在小说和短诗中表达的思想。这部诗剧是作者近60年文学创作的深化和总结。
影响 哈代晚年因在诗歌小说创作上的突出成就而获得巨大荣誉。逝世后，葬于伦敦威斯敏斯特诗人角，其心脏则按本人遗愿葬于故乡的斯廷斯福德教堂墓地。他写的传记和一些文学论文、文学笔记以及书信陆续出版。他在英国和世界各国具有相当大的影响。中国从20～30年代开始陆续介绍、翻译哈代的诗及小说作品，他已成为中国读者熟悉的英国作家之一。
主要诗集有《韦塞克斯诗集》、《今昔诗集》、《时光的笑柄》、《早期与晚期抒情诗》、诗剧《列王》等。
Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton, a hamlet in the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, England. His father worked as a stonemason and local builder. His mother was ambitious and well read, supplementing his formal education, which ended at the age of 16 when he became apprenticed to John Hicks, a local architect. Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester before moving to London in 1862. There he enrolled as a student at King’s College London. He won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association. He never truly felt at home in London and when he returned five years later to Dorset he decided to dedicate himself to writing.
In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall, Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married in 1874. Although he later became estranged from his wife, her death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him. He made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship; his Poems 1912-13 explore his grief. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Dugdale, 40 years his junior, whom he had met in 1905. However, Hardy remained preoccupied with Emma's sudden death, and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry.
Burial site of Thomas Hardy's heartHardy fell ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died in January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed. His funeral, on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, proved a controversial occasion: Hardy, his family and friends had wished him to be buried at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. However, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted he be placed in the abbey's Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.
Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors of his estate burnt his letters and notebooks. Twelve records survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of newspaper stories from the 1820s. Research into these provided insight into how Hardy kept track of them and how he used them in his later work.
Hardy's work was admired by many authors, amongst them D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. The writer Robert Graves, in his autobiography Goodbye to All That, recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s. Hardy received Graves and his newly married wife warmly, and was encouraging about the younger author's work.
In 1910, Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit.
Hardy's cottage at Bockhampton and Max Gate in Dorchester are owned by the National Trust.
Religious beliefs
Hardy’s idea of fate in life gave way to his philosophical struggle with God. Although Hardy’s faith remained intact, the irony and struggles of life led him to question God and His traditional meaning in the Christian sense.
“ The Christian god-the external personality-has been replaced by the intelligence of the First Cause…the replacement of the old concept of god as all-powerful by a new concept of universal consciousness. The ‘tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous’ is replaced by the ‘unconscious will of the Universe’ which progressively grows aware of itself and ‘ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic’. ”
Hardy's religious life seems to have mixed agnosticism and spiritism. Once, when asked in correspondence by a clergyman about the question of reconciling the horrors of pain with the goodness of a loving God, Hardy replied,
“ Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin, and the works of Herbert Spencer, and other agnostics. ”
Nevertheless, Hardy frequently conceived of and wrote about supernatural forces that control the universe, more through indifference or caprice than any firm will. Also, Hardy showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits. Despite these sentiments, Hardy retained a strong emotional attachment to the Christian liturgy and church rituals, particularly as manifested in rural communities, that had been such a formative influence in his early years. Some attributed the bleak outlook of many of his novels as reflecting his view of the absence of God. A sentence found in his Tess of the d'Urbervilles neatly sums up Hardy's philisophical stance:
“ The inherent will to enjoy and the circumstantial will against enjoyment ”
In Far From the Madding Crowd, Oak’s entire flock, and livelihood, dies. For Oak, being a simple farmer with nothing to his name, to encounter such a loss is a tragedy wherein Hardy wants his readers to consider the role of God in this type of situation along with the universe’s cruelty. Biblical references can be found woven throughout many of Hardy’s novels as he became friends with a Dorchester minister, Hourace Moule. Moule also influenced Hardy’s point of view by introducing him to scientific studies and ideas that questioned the literal meaning of the Bible. These new ideas, along with Darwinism, and a series of unsettling events in Hardy’s life may be the reason for his pessimistic attitude that is perceived by many critics and readers alike.
Novels
Hardy's first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher and Hardy destroyed the manuscript so only parts of the novel remain. He was encouraged to try again by his mentor and friend, Victorian poet and novelist George Meredith. Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) were published anonymously. In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, a story drawing on Hardy's courtship of his first wife, was published under his own name.
Hardy said that he first introduced Wessex in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), his next (and first important) novel. It was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next twenty-five years Hardy produced ten more novels.
The Hardys moved from London to Yeovil and then to Sturminster Newton, where he wrote The Return of the Native (1878). In 1885, they moved for a last time, to Max Gate, a house outside Dorchester designed by Hardy and built by his brother. There he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), the last of which attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman" and was initially refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented, was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle-classes.
Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with even stronger negative outcries from the Victorian public for its frank treatment of sex, and was often referred to as "Jude the Obscene". Heavily criticized for its apparent attack on the institution of marriage, the book caused further strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as being autobiographical. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, and the Bishop of Wakefield is reputed to have burnt a copy.
Despite this criticism, Hardy had become a celebrity in English literature by the 1900s, with several blockbuster novels under his belt, yet he felt disgust at the public reception of two of his greatest works and gave up writing novels altogether. Several critics have commented, however, that there was very little left for Hardy to write about, having creatively exhausted the increasingly fatalistic tone of his novels.
Literary themes
Although he wrote a great deal of poetry, mostly unpublished until after 1898, Hardy is best remembered for the series of novels and short stories he wrote between 1871 and 1895. His novels are set in the imaginary world of Wessex, a large area of south and south-west England, using the name of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that covered the area. Hardy was part of two worlds; on the one hand he had a deep emotional bond with the rural way of life which he had known as a child, but on the other he was aware of the changes which were under way, and the current social problems from the innovations in agriculture - he captured the epoch just before the railways and the industrial revolution changed the English countryside - to the unfairness and hypocrisy of Victorian sexual behaviour.
Hardy critiques certain social constraints that hindered the lives of those living in the 19th century. Considered a Victorian Realist writer, Hardy examines the social constraints that are part of the Victorian status quo. These rules hinder the lives of all involved and ultimately lead to a life of unhappiness. In Two on a Tower, Hardy seeks to take a stand against these rules and sets up a story against the backdrop of social structure by creating a romantic story of love that crosses the boundaries of class. The reader is forced to consider the option of disposing of the conventions set up for love. 19th century society enforces the conventions and societal pressure ensures conformity. Swithin St Cleeve is idyllic against social constraints. He is a meaningful, unique individual set up against the dictating confinements of the conventions of social structure.
“ In a novel structured around contrasts, the main opposition is between Swithin St Cleeve and Lady Viviette Constantine, who are presented as binary figures in a series of ways: aristocratic and lower class, youthful and mature, single and married, fair and dark, religious and agnostic…she [Lady Viviette Constantine] is also deeply conventional, absurdly wishing to conceal their marriage until Swithin has achieved social status through his scientific work, which gives rise to uncontrolled ironies and tragic-comic misunderstandings (Harvey 108). ”
Hardy’s stories take into consideration the events of life and their effects. Fate plays a big role as the thematic basis for many of his novels. Characters are constantly encountering crossroads, which are symbolic of a point of opportunity and transition. Far From the Madding Crowd tells a tale of lives that are constructed by chance. “Had Bathsheba not sent the valentine, had Fanny not missed her wedding, for example, the story would have taken an entirely different path.” Once things have been put into motion, they will play out. Hardy’s characters are in the grips of too much overwhelming fate.
He paints a vivid picture of rural life in the nineteenth century, with all its joys and suffering, a fatalistic world full of superstition and injustice. His heroes and heroines are often alienated from society and rarely become readmitted into it. He tends to emphasize the impersonal and, generally, negative powers of fate over the mainly working class people he represented in his novels. Hardy exhibits in his books elemental passion, deep instinct, the human will struggling against fatal and ill-comprehended laws, a victim also of unforeseeable change. Tess, for example, ends with some of the most poignant lines in British Literature on this theme:
“ Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on. ”
In particular, Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure is full of the sense of crisis of the later Victorian period (as witnessed in Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach'). It describes the tragedy of two new social types, Jude Fawley, a working man who attempts to educate himself, and his lover and cousin, Sue Bridehead, who represents the 'new woman' of the 1890s.
His mastery, as both an author and poet, lies in the creation of natural surroundings making discoveries through close observation and acute sensitiveness. He notices the smallest and most delicate details, yet he can also paint vast landscapes of his own Wessex in melancholy or noble moods. (His eye for poignant detail - such as the spreading bloodstain on the ceiling at the end of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and little Jude's suicide note - often came from clippings from newspaper reports of real events).
Poetry
For the full text of several poems, see the External links section
In 1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. Hardy claimed poetry as his first love, and published collections until his death in 1928. Although not as well received by his contemporaries as his novels, Hardy's poetry has been applauded considerably in recent years, in part because of the influence on Philip Larkin. However, critically it is still not regarded as highly as his prose.
Most of his poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering. Some, like The Darkling Thrush and An August Midnight, appear as poems about writing poetry, because the nature mentioned in them gives Hardy the inspiration to write those. A vein of regret tinges his often seemingly banal themes. His compositions range in style from the three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts to smaller, and often hopeful or even cheerful ballads of the moment such as the little-known The Children and Sir Nameless, a comic poem inspired by the tombs of the Martyns, builders of Athelhampton.
A few of Hardy's poems, such as The Blinded Bird (a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting), display his love of the natural world and his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and his membership in the RSPCA.
Composers who have set Hardy's text to music include Gerald Finzi, who produced six song-cycles for poems by Hardy, Benjamin Britten, who based his song-cycle Winter Words on Hardy's poetry, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Holst also based one of his last orchestral works, Egdon Heath, on Hardy's work. It is said to be Holst's masterpiece. Composer Lee Hoiby's setting of "The Darkling Thrush" became the basis of the multimedia opera Darkling and Timothy Takach, a graduate of St. Olaf, has also put "The Darkling Thrush" into arrangement for a 4-part mixed choir.
Works
Prose
Hardy divided his novels and collected short stories into three classes:
Novels of Character and Environment
The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, unpublished and lost)
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
The Return of the Native (1878)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
The Woodlanders (1887)
Wessex Tales (1888, a collection of short stories)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
Life's Little Ironies (1894, a collection of short stories)
Jude the Obscure (1895)
Romances and Fantasies
A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
The Trumpet-Major (1880)
Two on a Tower (1882)
A Group of Noble Dames (1891, a collection of short stories)
The Well-Beloved (1897) (first published as a serial from 1892).
Novels of Ingenuity
Desperate Remedies (1871)
The Hand of Ethelberta (1876)
A Laodicean (1881)
Hardy also produced a number of minor tales and a collaborative novel, The Spectre of the Real (1894). An additional short-story collection, beyond the ones mentioned above, is A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913). His works have been collected as the 24-volume Wessex Edition (1912-1913) and the 37-volume Mellstock Edition (1919-1920). His largely self-written biography appears under his second wife's name in two volumes from 1928-1930, as The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928, now published in a critical one-volume edition as The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, edited by Michael Millgate (1984).
Poetry (not a comprehensive list)
The Photograph (1890)
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
Poems of the Past and Present (1901)
The Dynasts, Part 1 (1904)
The Dynasts, Part 2 (1906)
The Dynasts, Part 3 (1908)
Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
Satires of Circumstance (1914)
Moments of Vision (1917)
Collected Poems (1919, part of the Mellstock Edition of his novels and poems)
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1922)
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928, published posthumously)
Drama
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (1923)
Locations in novels
Berkshire is North Wessex, Devon is Lower Wessex, Dorset is South Wessex, Somerset is Outer or Nether Wessex, Wiltshire is Mid-Wessex,
Bere Regis is King's-Bere of Tess, Bincombe Down cross roads is the scene of the military execution in A Melancholy Hussar. It is a true story, the deserters from the German Legion were shot in 1801 and are recorded in the parish register. Bindon Abbey is where Clare carried her. Bournemouth is Sandbourne of Hand of Ethelberta and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Bridport is Port Bredy, Charborough House and its folly tower at 50°46′38.75″N, 2°6′7.09″W is the model for Welland House in the novel Two on a Tower. Corfe Castle is the Corvsgate-Castle of Hand of Ethelberta. Cranborne Chase is The Chase scene of Tess's seduction. (Note - Bowerchalke on Cranborne Chase at 51°0′30.75″N, 1°59′18.30″W was the film location for the great fire in John Schlesinger's 1967 film Far from the Madding Crowd.)
Dorchester, Dorset is Casterbridge, the scene of Mayor of Casterbridge. Dunster Castle in Somerset is Castle De Stancy of A Laodicean. Fordington moor is Durnover moor and fields. Greenhill Fair near Bere Regis is Woodbury Hill Fair, Lulworth Cove is Lulstead Cove, Marnhull is Marlott of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Melbury House near Evershot is Great Hintock Court in A Group of Noble Dames. Minterne is Little Hintock, Owermoigne is Nether Moynton in Wessex Tales.
Piddlehinton and Piddle Trenthide are the Longpuddle of A Few Crusted Characters. Puddletown Heath, Moreton Heath, Tincleton Heath and Bere Heath are Egdon Heath. Poole is Havenpool in Life's Little Ironies. Portland is the scene of The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved. Puddletown is Weatherbury in Far from the Madding Crowd, River Frome valley is the scene of Talbothays dairy in Tess. Salisbury is Melchester in On the Western Circuit, Life's Little Ironies and Jude the Obscure etc. Shaftesbury is Shaston in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Sherborne is Sherton-Abbas, Sherborne Castle is home of Lady Baxby in A Group of Noble Dames. Stonehenge is the scene of Tess's apprehension. Sutton Poyntz is Overcombe. Swanage is the Knollsea of Hand of Ethelberta. Taunton is known as Toneborough in both Hardy's novels and poems (see http://www.wessex.me.uk/taunton.html). Wantage is Alfredston, of Jude the Obscure. Fawley, Berkshire is Marygreen of Jude the Obscure. Weyhill is Weydon Priors, Weymouth is Budmouth Regis, the scene of Trumpet Major & portions of other novels; Winchester is Wintoncester where Tess was executed. Wimborne is Warborne of Two on a Tower. Wolfeton House, near Dorchester is the scene of The Lady Penelope in a Group of Noble Dames. Woolbridge old Manor House, close to Wool station, is the scene of Tess's confession and honeymoon.
In other literature
Hardy provides the springboard for D. H. Lawrence's Study of Thomas Hardy (1936). Though this work became a platform for Lawrence's own developing philosophy rather than a more standard literary study, the influence of Hardy's treatment of character and Lawrence's own response to the central metaphysic behind many of Hardy's novels helped significantly in the development of The Rainbow (1915, suppressed) and Women in Love (1920, private publication).
Notes
^ Chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy, ed. James Gibson, Macmillam Education Ltd, 1975, p. 9.
^ "Thomas Hardy - the Time-Torn Man", BBC Radio 4, 23 October 2006 (a reading of Claire Tomalin's book of the same name).
^ bbc.co.uk (accessed August 12, 2006)
^ a b bbc.co.uk, (accessed August 12, 2006)
^ Wotton, George. Thomas Hardy: Towards A Materialist Criticism. Lanham,: Rowan & Littlefield, 1985, p. 36.
^ a b Ellman, Richard & O'Clair, Robert (eds.) 1988. "Thomas Hardy" in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Norton, New York.
^ (http://wps.ablongman.com/long_kennedy_lfpd_9/0,9130,1489987-,00.html
^ Thomas Hardy: The Tragedy of a Life Without Christ
^ ("Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy: Introduction." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 153. Gale Group, Inc., 2005. eNotes.com. 2006. 12 Mar, 2008
^ Words Words Words, La Spiga Languages, 2003 p.482
^ A Short History of English Literature, Emile Legouis, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1934
^ Herbert N. Schneidau. Waking Giants: The Presence of the Past in Modernism. Retrieved on 2008-04-16. (Google Books)
References
Armstrong, Tim. "Player Piano: Poetry and Sonic Modernity" in Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (January 2007), 1-19.
Blunden, Edmund. Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's, 1942.
Brennecke, Jr., Ernest. The Life of Thomas Hardy. New York: Greenberg, 1925.
D'Agnillo, Renzo, "Music and Metaphor in Under the Greenwood Tree, in The Thomas Hardy Journal, 9, 2 (May 1993), pp. 39-50.
D'Agnillo, Renzo, “Between Belief and Non-Belief: Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Shadow on the Stone’”, in Thomas Hardy, Francesco Marroni and Norman Page (eds), Pescara, Edizioni Tracce, 1995, pp. 197-222.
Deacon, Lois and Terry Coleman. Providence and Mr. Hardy. London: Hutchinson, 1966.
Draper, Jo. Thomas Hardy: A Life in Pictures. Wimborne, Dorset: The Dovecote Press.
Ellman, Richard & O'Clair, Robert (eds.) 1988. "Thomas Hardy" in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Norton, New York.
Gatrell, Simon. Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Gibson, James. Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1996.
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