Thomas Hardy: The Man in his Work

Abstract

When I was reading English at Cambridge in the 1920s our literature appeared to finish with Queen Victoria; at least, as far as I remember, the work of no living writer formed part of the syllabus. Hardy, therefore, was my own discovery, and I vividly remember that January morning of 1928 when I opened the paper and read of his death. By 1930 I had read all his works and, with the help of Hermann Lea’s Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, explored much of Dorset, visited St Juliot, and in the autumn of that year had tea with Mrs Hardy at Max Gate. Shortly afterwards I read a paper on Hardy to a literary society, and I think somewhat astonished my audience by maintaining that his poetry was even more important than his novels, though a young poet sitting beside me, Cecil Day-Lewis, agreed.