Jude the Obscure

Abstract

On October 22, 1893, Hardy concluded a letter to Mrs Henniker —identified by Florence Hardy as one of the models for Sue Bridehead—by asking her what he should call the heroine of his new novel.¹ It appears from the letter that he had not yet begun work on the actual writing of the book, and evidence of other literary activity during the autumn of 1893 the period of his collaboration with Mrs Henniker on the story “The Spectre of the Real”,² serves to cast further doubt on the statement in the Preface to the first edition of Jude that the manuscript was written “at full length” from August 1893 onwards, on the basis of an outline completed the previous spring (vii). Clearly, however, the book was very much in Hardy’s mind, and although on December 1, 1893, he told Mrs Henniker that he was reluctant to go on with it, by January 15, 1894, he was becoming enthusiastic about his heroine; by April 7 the story had carried him into such “un-expected fields” that he wrote to Harper & Brothers suggesting cancellation of their agreement with him.³ In the event, Hardy prepared a heavily bowdlerised serial version of the novel for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and then restored the original text for the first edition, published by Osgood, Mcllvaine in November 1895.⁴