The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy

This is the long-awaited supplementary volume to the authoritative seven-volume edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, edited by Michael Millgate and Richard Purdy, that was published by OUP between 1978 and 1988. Volume 8, edited by Millgate in collaboration with leading Hardy scholar Professor Keith Wilson, contains previously unpublished letters from all periods of Hardy's career, his earliest known letter among them. It introduces important new correspondents, throws fresh light on existing correspondences, and richly enhances the reader's understanding of both familiar and hitherto unfamiliar aspects of Hardy's life and work and of the times in which he lived.

Michael Millgate was born in England in 1929, studied at the universities of Cambridge, Michigan, and Leeds, and became a Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds before moving to Canada in 1964 as a Professor of English at York University, Toronto, and then, in 1967, at the University of Toronto, where he subsequently received the honorary title of University Professor. His early publications were on American literature, especially William Faulkner, his later publications chiefly on Thomas Hardy.

Keith Wilson is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. He has published extensively on Hardy, and on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature, the Victorian and Edwardian music hall, and the literary representation of London.