Although Thomas Hardy has always been better known as a novelist than a poet, it is as a poet that he wished to be remembered. From the 900 or so poems he wrote, Elaine Wilson has chosen 80 to illustrate his life. The poems are transcibed in calligraphy by Frederick Marns.
Unknown Binding
,
160 pages
Published
January 1st 1984
by Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers
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 facination 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 char
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 facination 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.