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Summary
Summary
A major new biography of one of the giants of early modern fiction and poetry
Internationally renowned as the author of Far From the Madding Crowd , Tess of the D'Urbervilles , Jude the Obscure, Wessex Poems and Other Verses , and Winter Words , Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) nonetheless remains an elusive and enigmatic figure. His own diligent efforts to guard his privacy--making bonfires of his papers, ghost-writing his own biography to be published after his death--have obscured many aspects of the author's personal life. This book, the first major biography of Hardy in decades, draws on new and extensive archival research to present a more complex picture of Hardy than has been possible to date. Author Ralph Pite investigates the validity of long-accepted views of the author: Was his early life devoted to his preparation for becoming a writer? Did his first wife, Emma, trick him into an unwanted marriage? Was his poetry far dearer to his heart than the novels? And was Florence, his second wife, as conflicted and passionate as caricatures have suggested? Pite examines the relationships and contexts that shaped Hardy most--the women in his life, his friends and mentors, social and family pressures, career structures of his day, the Devonshire landscape--and offers new insight into the man who, until now, was hidden behind an opaque public image he helped to create.
Author Notes
Ralph Pite is professor of English at Cardiff University, Wales. His previous books include The Circle of Our Vision: Dante's Presence in English Romantic Poetry , and Hardy's Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel .
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
Pite bases this revisionist biography of Hardy on his reinterpretation of the novelist's autobiographical Life. Widely regarded as a work of candor, Hardy's Life turns out be an artful fiction. As deftly as he created Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Clym Yeobright, and other characters, Hardy turned his autobiographical self into a dignified stoic, born to be a great poet, so denying his readers access to the tempestuous realities of his formative years. Through careful research and close readings of Hardy's work, Pite recovers the psychological confusion that Hardy sought--with astonishing success--to keep out of the public eye. Pite reveals, for instance, that the youthful rejection of Christianity that Hardy depicts in his Life as the foregone conclusion of a tough-minded intellect was actually an emotionally wrenching process. Similarly, whereas the Hardy of the Life responds to hostile criticism with philosophical detachment, the real Hardy recoiled into self-doubt. The maturing writer whom Pite exposes looks quite unlike the godlike sage of the Life, yet Hardy's own novels and poetry foster compassion for the painfully fractured personality Hardy tried to mask. A valuable complement to Tomalin's 2006 life of Hardy: Tomalin illuminating the hard-won authorial poise of Hardy's late verse, Pite plumbing the long-hidden tempests of the younger soul. --Bryce Christensen Copyright 2007 Booklist
Choice Review
Ever since Hardy ghostwrote his two-volume Life and destroyed much of the primary material on which it was based, questions have lingered about how much the Hardy one gleans from that work is "authentic." Marked by rigorous detail, playful speculation, and psychological evocation, Pite's contribution to Hardy biography--revitalized in recent years by eponymous works by Michael Millgate (CH, Jul'05, 42-6349) and Claire Tomalin (2007)--argues that Hardy's struggle to straddle urban and rural worlds and to mediate aspirations for success and fears of failure reveals a side of him that is more dynamic, vibrant, unpredictable, and human than Hardy's own Hardy. Pite (Cardiff Univ., Wales) offers powerful arguments for how those closest to Hardy bear directly on his writings about beauty, romance, love, and sex--subjects whose personalization penetrate Hardy's "carefully maintained serene exterior." Some may object to Pite's shifts between second- and third-person perspectives and the abundance of conditionals ("maybe," "probably," "perhaps"), but these stylistic features are also endearing. Pite invites readers to imagine anew what Hardy's own account seems to avoid: How emotionally complex was he? How did he think of himself as a husband, son, brother, friend? What did he really think of love, sex, marriage? Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. A. D. Belyea Royal Military College
Library Journal Review
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), a shy country boy from Dorchester, England, became a world-famous writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. His first commercial success was Far from the Madding Crowd, which coincided with his marriage to Emma Gifford. The marriage proved to be tortuous to both parties, but Hardy's writing ventures remained successful-until the negative reception of Jude the Obscure and its handling of social and sexual mores and behaviors. From that point on, Hardy turned primarily to writing poetry, though he did pen his biography under an assumed name, glossing over what he did not want fully known. After Emma's death in 1912, he married Florence Dugdale, but his infatuations with women continued. Pite (English, Cardiff Univ.; Hardy's Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel) draws on new archival research to integrate Hardy's personal life, including his marriages and the changing social scene, with his novels and poetry. Much has been written of Hardy, most influentially by Michael Millgate. But Pite's treatment, while not ignoring the writer's flaws, offers a more admirable portrait. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgements | p. vii |
| Maps | p. vii |
| Introduction - Higher Bockhampton | p. 1 |
| 1 A railway bore him through | p. 11 |
| 2 One who lived and died where he was born | p. 25 |
| 3 She who upheld me and I | p. 46 |
| 4 'The playground of TH's childhood' | p. 61 |
| 5 His kindred they, his sweetheart I | p. 74 |
| 6 One who walks west, a city-clerk | p. 92 |
| 7 If but some vengeful god would call to me | p. 108 |
| 8 Red roses and smug nuns | p. 124 |
| 9 Believed-in things | p. 136 |
| 10 Rising and falling with the tide | p. 149 |
| 11 With magic in my eyes | p. 166 |
| 12 That there should have come a change | p. 186 |
| 13 Wasted were two souls in their prime | p. 210 |
| 14 Lifelong to be I thought it | p. 228 |
| 15 Some hid dread afoot | p. 244 |
| 16 No such bower will be known | p. 258 |
| 17 Taking the universe seriously | p. 270 |
| 18 Life-loyalties | p. 287 |
| 19 If the true artist ever weeps | p. 304 |
| 20 That we had all resigned for love's dear ends | p. 321 |
| 21 No balm for all your sorrow | p. 342 |
| 22 The day goeth away | p. 356 |
| 23 Few persons are more martial than I | p. 377 |
| 24 We kissed at the barrier | p. 394 |
| 25 The mind goes back to the early times | p. 409 |
| 26 The sustaining power of poetry | p. 422 |
| 27 No mean power in the contemporary world | p. 438 |
| 28 Wistlessness | p. 450 |
| Conclusion: Max Gate | p. 465 |
| Notes | p. 477 |
| Further Reading | p. 501 |
| Index | p. 507 |
