Two on a Tower

Abstract

After Hardy had recovered from his illness, he and Emma began looking for a permanent home outside of London, and on June 25, 1881, they moved into a house in the small east Dorset town of Wimborne. It was here that Hardy wrote Two on a Tower.¹ Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, had approached Hardy about a possible serial in late September, 1881, but it was January, 1882, before a firm agreement was reached.² Some of Hardy’s time during the latter part of 1881 must have been given to the completion of short stories,³ but an indication that he was working up material for Two on a Tower is provided by his application to the Astronomer Royal on November 26, 1881, for permission to visit Greenwich Observatory.⁴ Hardy seems to have begun writing the novel early in 1882, and to have completed it by September of the same year. He told Gosse that it had been hastily written—“though the plan of the story was carefully thought out, the actual writing was lamentably hurried”—and later commented that the “backgrounds” had been more lightly sketched in than was usual in his work.⁵ The three-volume first edition was published, by Sampson Low, in late October 1882.⁶