Abstract
The blurb on the back of a lavishly illustrated biography by Timothy Sullivan (1975) tells us that Thomas Hardy is ‘the supreme poet of the English landscape’.1 It is not a statement that many who are familiar with English literature would think twice about. Some might say ‘what about Wordsworth?’ — but on the whole there would be assent. Over the hundred years or so since Hardy was producing his earliest novels of ‘Wessex’, the sentiment has acquired something of the status of a myth. But what does it mean, and is it as natural a judgement as it seems?
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Notes
Timothy O’Sullivan, Thomas Hardy: An Illustrated Biography (1975).
Peter Widdowson, ‘Hardy in History: a Case Study in the Sociology of Literature’, Literature and History, vol. 9 no. 1 (Spring 1983).
Roy Hattersley, ‘Endpiece: How I Came to Casterbridge by Way of Reykjavik’, Guardian, 23 January 1982.
Many subsequent references in this paper are to R. G. Cox (ed.), Thomas Hardy: the Critical Heritage (1970): these will be noted ‘C.H.’. Here the reference is to an unsigned review in Athenaeum, 15 June 1872 (C.H., p. 9).
Edmund Gosse, ‘Thomas Hardy’, The Speaker, 13 September 1890 (C.H., p. 169).
W. L. Phelps, Essays on Modern Novelists (1910); originally published in Atlantic Monthly (Boston) (C.H., p. 400).
It is worth noting that, in a letter to Sir Frederick Macmillan dated 2 April 1912, Hardy writes: ‘The advantage of classifying the novels seems chiefly to be that it affords the journalists something to discuss’ (The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, IV: 1909–13, ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (Oxford, 1984), p. 209). Hardy, typically, masks his real intentions in irony, but it does suggest that he was sharply conscious of the processes of critical reproduction. I am grateful to Norman Page for pointing this reference out to me.
Edward Wright, ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’, Quarterly Review (April 1904) (C.H., pp. 347, 349, 351, 349, 359).
Harold Williams, The Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy’, North American Review (January 1914) (C.H., pp. 429, 430, 431, 434). His ‘five novels’ are Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Woodlanders, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Charles Whibley, ‘Thomas Hardy’, Blackwood’s Magazine, June 1913 (C.H., p. 415).
Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy (1942), pp. 212, 251.
David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist (1943), pp. 65, 69, 22.
Douglas Brown, Thomas Hardy (1961), pp. 30–1, 90, 63, 111.
Irving Howe, Thomas Hardy (1968), pp. 19, 32–3, 17–18, 21–23.
J. Stevens Cox (ed.), Thomas Hardy: Materials for a Study of his Life, Times and Works (Guernsey, 1968) and More Materials … (1971)
also Ruth Firor, Folkways in Thomas Hardy (1931)
Hermann Lea, Thomas Hardy’s Wessex (1913)
Clive Holland, Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Scene (1971)
Denys Kay-Robinson, Hardy’s Wessex Reappraised (1972).
Andrew Enstice, Thomas Hardy: Landscape of the Mind (1979) pp. ix, 16.
David Lodge, Working with Structuralism (1981) pp. 91, 101.
For a fuller discussion of this, see Peter Brooker and Peter Widdowson, ‘A Literature for England, c. 1900–14’ in R. Colls and P. Dodd, eds, The Idea of ‘Englishness’, 1880–1920 (1985).
Henry Newbolt, ‘A New Departure in English Poetry’, Quarterly Review (January 1909) (C.H., pp. 386, 387, 393).
Donald Davie, Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (1973) p. ix. All subsequent references to this book appear in brackets in the text.
F. E. Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1928 (1962), p. 204. Davie quotes the passage, op. cit., pp. 102–3.
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© 1986 Norman Page
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Widdowson, P. (1986). Hardy, ‘Wessex’, and the Making of a National Culture. In: Page, N. (eds) Thomas Hardy Annual No. 4. Macmillan Literary Annuals. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07810-3_3
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