Hardy: Selected Poems

After the hostile reception of Jude the Obscure in 1896, Thomas Hardy devoted the last thirty years of his life to poetry. This generous selection of poems displays the wide variety of his metrical styles and stanza forms, as well as the philosophical scope of his work. While his verse is often seen as the culmination of late Victorian moods, Hardy combines irony and stoicism to forge a thoroughly modern stance against ruin. His poems illustrating the perversity of fate are some of the most authentic expressions of human sorrow and regret in the English language; and the love lyrics written for his deceased first wife constitute the best examples of the modern elegy. This volume includes an insightful introductory essay along with textual and explanatory notes.

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At sixteen, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poet’s Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.