Thomas Hardy

by Patricia Ingham

Part of the new Oxford World's Classics series, Authors in Context, Thomas Hardy is a critical companion to the Oxford World's Classics Hardy editions. It examines Hardy's novels and puts them in their author's social, cultural, and political contexts.

Thomas Hardy was born before the invention of the car, the telephone, and the airplane, when no woman could vote, when there were different rules for men and women wanting to divorce, and education was the preserve of the upper classes. He lived to see the Zeppelins over London, new divorce laws, wider educational opportunities, votes for women, and the questioning of religion. In novels such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure Hardy engaged directly with the issues of the day, and his fiction resonates with contemporary concerns.

This book explores the interconnections between life and art, and shows how modern interpretations in film and television create new contexts in which to read the works afresh.

Genres: Biography, Classics, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Patricia Ingham is senior research fellow and reader at St. Anne's College, Oxford. She is the general editor of Thomas Hardy's fiction in Penguin Classics and edited Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South for the series.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's cool about this book is how it makes me want to go back and re-read the Thomas Hardy novels I love so much, re-read with new insights and understandings. There is an interesting discussion of the movie versions in the last chapter.

[Haythem Bastawy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been helpful in terms of understanding the themes and concepts of Thomas Hardy and it helped fit them within the context of the author's contemporary climate. I felt sometimes however that there has been more of context than of Hardy within it.

[Nick Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful.

[Eleni · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my Thomas Hardy course. Places Hardy vis a vis intellectual debates at the end of the 19th century about class, women, science, literature.