A Companion to Thomas Hardy

Through original essays from a distinguished team of international scholars and Hardy specialists, A Companion to Thomas Hardy provides a unique, one-volume resource, which encompasses all aspects of Hardy's major novels, short stories, and poetry

Informed by the latest in scholarly, critical, and theoretical debates from some of the world's leading Hardy scholars

Reveals groundbreaking insights through examinations of Hardy’s major novels, short stories, poetry, and drama

Explores Hardy's work in the context of the major intellectual and socio-cultural currents of his time and assesses his legacy for subsequent writers

Keith Wilson is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Thomas Hardy on Stage (1995), editor of the Penguin Classics editions of The Mayor of Casterbridge (1997; 2003) and The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories (2003, with Kristin Brady), and editor of Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Michael Millgate (2006). He has also published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature, Victorian and Edwardian music hall, and the literary representation of London.

Notes on Contributors
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Keith Wilson (University of Ottawa)
Part I: The Life:

1. Hardy as Biographical Subject: Michael Millgate (University of Toronto)

Part II: The Intellectual Context:

2. Hardy and Philosophy: Phillip Mallett (University of St Andrews)

3. Hardy and Darwin: An Enchanting Hardy?: George Levine (Rutgers University/New York University)

4. Hardy and the Place of Culture: Angelique Richardson (University of Exeter)

5. “The Hard Case of the Would-be-Religious”: Hardy and the Church from Early Life to Later Years: Pamela Dalziel (University of British Columbia)

6. Thomas Hardy’s Notebooks: William Greenslade (University of the West of England)

7. “Genres are not to be mixed. . . . I will not mix them”: Discourse, Ideology, and Generic Hybridity in Hardy’s Fiction: Richard Nemesvari (St Francis Xavier University)

8. Hardy and his Critics: Gender in the Interstices: Margaret R. Higonnet (University of Connecticut)

Part III: The Socio-Cultural Context:

9. “His Country”: Hardy in the Rural: Ralph Pite (University of Bristol)

10. Thomas Hardy of London: Keith Wilson (University of Ottawa)

11. “A Thickness of Wall”: Hardy and Class: Roger Ebbatson (University of Worcester)

12. Reading Hardy through Dress: The Case of Far From the Madding Crowd: Simon Gatrell (University of Georgia)

13. Hardy and Romantic Love: Michael Irwin (University of Kent)

14. Hardy and the Visual Arts: J. B. Bullen (University of Reading)

15. Hardy and Music: Uncanny Sounds: Claire Seymour (Queen’s College London)

Part IV: The Works:

16.The Darkening Pastoral: Under the Greenwood Tree and Far From the Madding Crowd: Stephen Regan (University of Durham)

17. “Wild Regions of Obscurity”: Narrative in The Return of the Native: Penny Boumelha (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

18. Hardy’s “Novels of Ingenuity.” Desperate Remedies, The Hand of Ethelberta, and A Laodicean: Rare Hands at Contrivances: Mary Rimmer (University of New Brunswick)

19. Hardy’s “Romances and Fantasies.” A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Trumpet-Major, Two on a Tower, and The Well-Beloved: Experiments in Metafiction: Jane Thomas (University of Hull)

20. The Haunted Structures of The Mayor of Casterbridge: Julian Wolfreys (Loughborough University)

21. Dethroning the High Priest of Nature in The Woodlanders: Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

22. Melodrama, Vision, and Modernity: Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Tim Dolin (Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia)

23. Jude the Obscure and English National Identity: The Religious Striations of Wessex: Dennis Taylor (Boston College)

24. “… into the hands of pure-minded English girls”: Hardy’s Short Stories and the Late Victorian Literary Marketplace: Peter Widdowson (University of Gloucestershire)

25. Sequence and Series in Hardy’s Poetry: Tim Armstrong (Royal Holloway College, University of London)

26. Hardy’s Poems: The Scholarly Situation: William W. Morgan (Illinois State University)

27. That’s Show Business: Spectacle, Narration, and Laughter in The Dynasts: G. Glen Wickens (Bishop’s University)

Part V: Hardy the Modern:

28. Modernist Hardy: Hand-Writing in The Mayor of Casterbridge: J. Hillis Miller (University of California at Irvine)

29. Inhibiting the Voice: Thomas Hardy and Modern Poetics: Charles Lock (University of Copenhagen)

30. Hardy’s Heirs: D. H. Lawrence and John Cowper Powys: Terry R. Wright (Newcastle University)

Index