Thomas Hardy: Selected Poetry and Nonfictional Prose

by Thomas Hardy, Peter Widdowson (Editor)

In addition to 184 poems and an annotated selection of Hardy's prose writings, this book includes an introduction on Hardy's life and work, a critical essay re-assessing his place in literary history, and explanatory notes on each poem and essay.

480 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1997

About the author

Thomas 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.

Reviews

[Amateur-Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy's poems are bloomy gloomy indeed. They touch person's personal experiences with the sorrows and the usual moments we live for. Not bad.

[Daphne Harries · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually like Hardy. I just think Neutral Tones is about a bad breakup and he is taking it out on us by using awful adjectives like “grayish” repeatedly. Please find a better neutral tone, Tom.

[Kidlitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is he a bad poet or a good one, that is the question. And no matter how much I read him, I can never decide.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read most of the prose in this volume, but I've read all of the poems (most or all of them not for the first time). Either the editor has selected really well, or Hardy's poetry is a lot stronger than I remembered when I was working my way through his volumes several years ago. This is a really fine selection of really fine poems, even though it omits one of my very favorites, "Pantera".