The Well-Beloved (1897): Galatea’s Revenge

Abstract

The Well-Beloved, published in 1897, was Thomas Hardy’s prose swansong. As J. Hillis-Miller has indicated in his introduction to the novel, the 1892 serial version, which appeared in The Illustrated London News under the title The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, and the 1897 book version bracket Jude the Obscure (1895).¹ Both Hillis-Miller and Patricia Ingham suggest that Hardy’s radical revision of the serial version for book publication is sufficient to allow The Well-Beloved to stand in its own right as Hardy’s final novel (Ingham 1989: 96).