Thomas Hardy (Authors in Context)

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Summary: Captures Hardy's imagination and impact, then and now
Review: Thomas Hardy is one of the giants of English literature - producing classic texts, such as Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, which remain popular today.

This highly accessible volume examines the man behind the works, his often tragic characters and the mythical land of Wessex.

It is part of the 'Authors in Context' series, a sub-series of the Oxford World's Classics series, which captures the essence of popular writers, including Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens (see my reviews on these books).

The series details a writer's life and times and also explores the social, cultural and political values that influenced their works. In addition to examining the writer's impact on their own times, each volume considers their interpretation today, in terms of being recontexualized on the stage and screen.

'Thomas Hardy' is written by Patricia Ingham, a senior research fellow and reader in English at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has edited texts by Hardy, Dickens, Gaskell and Gissing, as well as writing widely on the Victorian novel. She has written several books on authors including Thomas Hardy: A Feminist Reading.

The book features detailed chapters on:

• The Life of Thomas Hardy
• The Fabric of Society
• The Literary Context
• Social Issues: Class in Hardy's Novels
• Social Issues: Women and Society
• Hardy and Science
• Religious Issues
• Hardy Recontextualized

Ingham addresses a wide range of issues relating to Hardy's life, influences and his novels, short stories and poetry, as well as the fictional Wessex:

"In the evolution of Wessex over a 25-year period Hardy was not merely creating a distinctive landscape. He was creating a mythical kingdom which dislocates not only place but time. It involves everything that was and is inscribed in the landscape: layers of history, events and artefacts. To the extend that it involves an older and more stable community it is elegiac. But nostalgia is only a single element in a complex entity. Wessex is a place, a history, a celebration, an elegy; it is not merely a region, imagined or real."

'Thomas Hardy' includes an extensive chronology that details the major works and events of the writer's life as well as an extensive further reading section plus a range of web sites.

While academically researched and drawing on a wide range of references, 'Thomas Hardy' is a highly readable volume on this classic writer.

-- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'. For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com