An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress and Other Stories

An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress and Other Stories PDF

Author: Thomas Hardy

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1999-02

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780192836854

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'An Indiscretion in the Life of a Heiress', is one of ten stories - three collaborative, all uncollected - that are brought together in this volume. 'Indiscretion', derived from Hardy's unpublished first novel The Poor Man and the Lady, represents one of his earliest confrontations with theclass and gender issues which were to remain central to his fiction throughout his life. Several of the other stories, notably 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak', 'The Spectre of the Real', and 'The Unconquerable', raise similar questions, while at the same time illustrating, in typical Hardyan fashion,life's little (or somewhat larger) ironies. Some of the other stories are less characteristic: 'Old Mrs Chuncle', for example, approximates moral fable more closely than is usual for Hardy, while 'Our Exploits at West Poley' is anomalous not only in being (like 'The Thieves Who Couldn't Help Sneezing') a story written for children but alsoin experimenting with unreliable narration. Such stories are signifcant precisley because they incoporate varieties of technique, subject matter, and genre that are otherwise found in the Hardy canon either rarely or not at all.

Encyclopedia of the British Short Story

Encyclopedia of the British Short Story PDF

Author: Andrew Maunder

Publisher: Infobase Learning

Published: 2015-04-22

Total Pages: 2069

ISBN-13: 1438140703

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Provides a comprehensive reference to short fiction from Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Commonwealth, featuring some of the most popular writers and works.

Thomas Hardy's Shorter Fiction

Thomas Hardy's Shorter Fiction PDF

Author: Sophie Gilmartin

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2007-12-15

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0748632557

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This critical study of Hardy's short stories provides a thorough account of the ruling preoccupations and recurrent writing strategies of his entire corpus as well as providing detailed readings of several individual texts. It relates the formal choices imposed on Hardy as contributor to Blackwood's Magazine and other periodicals to the methods he employed to encode in fiction his troubled attitude towards the social politics of the West Country, where most of the stories are set. No previous criticism has shown how the powerful challenges to the reader mounted in Hardy's later stories reveal the complexity of his motivations during a period when he was moving progressively in the direction of exchanging fiction for poetry. * Unique in providing a comprehensive criticism of Hardy's entire output of short stories. * Full, detailed, close readings of a number of key stories make this useful as a potential teaching resource. * Draws on the work of social historians to make clear the background of social and political unrest in Dorset that is partly uncovered and partly hidden in Hardy's portrayals of his fictional Wessex. * Offers fascinating insights into Hardy's near-obsession in his mature phase with the marriage contract, and with its legal binding of erratic men and women.

Woman Much Missed

Woman Much Missed PDF

Author: Mark Ford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-06-14

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0192886827

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Woman Much Missed is the first book-length study of the many poems (over 150) that Thomas Hardy composed in the wake of the death of his first wife Emma in November of 1912. Mark Ford uses these poems to develop a narrative of their four-year courtship on the remote and romantic coast of Cornwall where they met, and then follows Thomas's poetic recreation of the slow degeneration of their marriage and their embittered final decade. Ford shows how Emma's writings and experiences during this time were fundamental to Thomas's evolution into both a best-selling novelist and into one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Although for over a decade the marriage between Thomas and Emma had been troubled, and indeed Emma spent much time during her final years secluded in her attic rooms above his study, her death stimulated him to write some of the greatest elegies in English. Twenty-one of these, including masterpieces such as 'The Voice' (which opens 'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me') and 'After a Journey' were collected in 'Poems of 1912-13'. While these have received much attention and are often read by school pupils and university students alike, his numerous other poems about Emma have only rarely been discussed. Ford corrects this oversight, providing accessible and insightful readings from a poet's perspective.

A Companion to Thomas Hardy

A Companion to Thomas Hardy PDF

Author: Keith Wilson

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1118398513

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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

Thomas Hardy Reappraised

Thomas Hardy Reappraised PDF

Author: Keith Wilson

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-12-15

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1442659548

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As a writer who achieved major eminence in both fiction and poetry and whose engagement with these genres encompassed the period of transition from Victorianism to Modernism, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) enjoys a unique position in English Literary History. Michael Millgate, University Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Toronto is widely recognized as the world's foremost Thomas Hardy scholar. His contributions to the study of Hardy over more than three decades include his recently 'revisited' biography, the seven volume edition of Hardy's collected letters, and the influential critical study Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist. In Thomas Hardy Reappraised, editor Keith Wilson pays tribute to Millgate's many contributions to Hardy studies by bringing together new work by fifteen of the world's most eminent Hardy scholars. These essays address questions of biblical and literary allusiveness, cultural, historical, and philosophical context, narrative and poetic theory and practice, as well as Hardy's place in the modern world and his influence on younger writers. Together, the contributors offer one of the most significant reappraisals of Hardy's work to have appeared since Michael Millgate helped to transform Hardy studies. They offer graphic testimony to Hardy's enduring popularity and importance. Contributors: Pamela Dalziel Mary Rimmer Dennis Taylor Barbara Hardy U.C. Knoepflmacher Marjorie Garson Ruth Bernard Yeazell Simon Gatrell J. Hillis Miller George Levine Jeremy V. Steele William W. Morgan Samuel Hynes Norman Page W. J. Keith

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy PDF

Author: Mark Ford

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-10-10

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 067473789X

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Acknowledgements -- Index

The Withered Arm and Other Stories 1874-1888

The Withered Arm and Other Stories 1874-1888 PDF

Author: Thomas Hardy

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2006-08-31

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0141938110

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"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine." So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of Hardy's finest short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak' was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures, and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves. Several of the stories in The Withered Arm were collected to form the famous volume, Wessex Tales (1888), the first time Hardy denoted 'Wessex' to describe his fictional world. The Withered Arm is the first of a new two-volume selection of Hardy's short stories, edited with an introduction and notes by Kristin Brady.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Mayor of Casterbridge PDF

Author: Thomas Hardy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-08-14

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0199537038

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Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. 18 years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge.

The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story

The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story PDF

Author: Andrew Maunder

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0816074968

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A comprehensive reference to short fiction from Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Commonwealth. With approximately 450 entries, this A-to-Z guide explores the literary contributions of such writers as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D H Lawrence, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Katherine Mansfield, Martin Amis, and others.