Public domain photograph of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Main Page | 19th-Century Literature | 19th-Century Novel | About literaryhistory.com

Literary Criticism

Armstrong, Tim. A chapter from Haunted Hardy: Poetry, History, Memory, (2000, Palgrave). On Hardy's poetry: "Thomas Hardy’s poetry, like his life, is full of secrets."

Austin, Linda M. Hardy's elegiac "Poems of 1912-13" as a sequential response to mourning. Victorian Poetry, Volume 36, no. 1, Spring 1998, "Reading Depression in Hardy's 'Poems of 1912-13'" (removed)

Daleski, H.M. A review of Thomas Hardy and Paradoxes of Love (Univ.of Missouri Press, 1997). Reviewed in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 1997 by Spilka, Mark

Davis, Holly. "Romanticism in Jude the Obscure." Excerpt from an MA thesis discusses Percy Bysshe Shelley's influence on Hardy's Jude the Obscure, in Deepsouth v.4 n.1 (Autumn 1998)

Davis, Holly. Romantic elements in Hardy's The Woodlanders. Excerpt from an MA thesis, in Deepsouth v.3 n.3 (Spring 1997)

Ferguson, Susan L. "Drawing fictional lines: dialect and narrative in the Victorian novel." On the uses of dialect in Thomas Hardy's novels and those of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Walter Scott, and others, in Style, Spring, 1998.

Fierz, Charles L. "Polanski Misses." On the film version of Tess. In Literature Film Quarterly, 1999

Gibson, James. A review of Gibson's Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life, reviewed in Contemporary Review, Sept, 1996 by Geoffrey Heptonstall

Grossman, Julie. "Hardy's Tess and 'The Photograph': images to die for." In Criticism, Fall, 1993

Longo, Mary Ann Tighe. "Dysfunctional families and determinism in the fiction of Thomas Hardy," 1993 dissertation, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Morgan, William W. "Hardy's Return to Verse: Part 1--A New Chronology," discusses Hardy's decision to return to writing poetry and give up writing fiction

Plotz, John. Motion sickness: spectacle and circulation in Thomas Hardy's "On the Western Circuit." in Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1996

Rogers, Shannon. Hardy's interest in medievalism as expressive of the "ache of modernism" in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. In CrossConnect

Shrimpton, Nicholas. "'Lane, You're a Perfect Pessimist': Pessimism and the English Fin de siècle" [Arthur Schopenhauer]. Influence of Schopenhauer's philosophy of pessimism on Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, Byron, and others. Yearbook of English Studies, 2007

Shumaker, Jeanette Roberts Abjection and degeneration in Thomas Hardy's "Barbara of the House of Grebe" in College Literature, Spring 1999

Thomas, Jane. A substantial introduction to Thomas Hardy from the Literary Encyclopedia, July 17, 2001

Introductory, overview, unsigned material

The Victorian Web has essays on Thomas Hardy and his writing techniques, themes, and the cultural and historical context, from Professor George Landow

Reprint of Thomas Hardy--Novelist or Poet? (1929) a book by bibliophile A.E. Newton that asks whether Hardy was greater as a novelist or a poet

Introduction to Thomas Hardy's war poetry, a study guide for undergraduates by Andrew Moore of Universal Teacher

A study guide for Thomas Hardy's poetry contains 2-3 paragraph discussions of the following poems: The Going of the Battery, Drummer Hodge, The Man He Killed, Channel Firing, In Time of "The Breaking of Nations", The Going, The Haunter, The Voice, During Wind and Rain, The Darkling Thrush, Shut Out That Moon, To an Unborn Pauper Child, The Oxen, Afterwards. At British scholar Andrew Moore's web site, Universal Teacher

"Thomas Hardy abandoned his career as a novelist because he was hurt by harsh reviews of Jude the Obscure, letters to be auctioned at Sotheby's have revealed." News article in The Independent, (London), Oct 9, 2001 by Anna Whitney

Very brief introduction to Thomas Hardy from the Academy of American Poets

Extended article on The Return of the Native, by Maureen C. Howard, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute (removed)

Texts, web sites

The Thomas Hardy Association founded in 1997, has an archived discussion forum, and sections on Hardy's life (which includes extensive links to reviews of Hardy biographies); on collecting Hardy's poetry; bibliographical information, and more

A feature page on Victorian times from the BBC, contains social history written especially for the site

A list of Thomas Hardy-related web sites, compiled by Dr. Robert Schweik of the Thomas Hardy Association

Main Page | 19th-Century Literature | 19th-Century Novel | About literaryhistory.com

1998-2009 by Jan Pridmore