Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Such appraisals as Samuel C. Chew's, that Hardy knew the Southern Counties as Gilbert White knew Selborne or Arnold Bennett the Five Towns, require no affidavits. But Mrs. Hardy's assertions that he had a knowledge of the city “like a born Londoner”, “as only a young man can get it”, and that there is more autobiography in a hundred lines of his poetry than in all his novels—such statements warrant more study than they have hitherto received.
1 Thomas Hardy (New York: Knopf, 1929), p. 104.
2 F. E. Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 82.
3 F. E. Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. 196.
4 Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1942), pp. 28 and 20.
6 Op. cit., p. 20.
The Poet as Citizen and Other Papers (New York: Macmillan, 1935), p. 207.
7 Figures of Transition (New York: Macmillan, 1939), p. 115.
8 The Early Life, p. 140.
9 Ibid., p. 290.
10 The Later Years, p. 14.
11 The Early Life, pp. 180, 295, 231, 297, 296, 309, 296, 270, 216, 273.
12 February 27, 1908, p. 65.
13 i, 5, v; iii, 4, viii; ii, 6, vii.
14 The Early Life, pp. 224–225.
15 Ibid., p. 225.
16 Ibid., p. 312.
17 The Dynasts, i, 1, iii; i, 6, v; iii, 4, iv.
18 The Early Life, p. 295.
19 Ibid., pp. 285–286.
20 The Dynasts, i, 4, vi.
21 Jude, Part vi, Chap. 3, p. 413 (Wessex edition, London, 1912),
22 Thomas Hardy, p, 178,
23 Jude, Part vi, Chap. 3, p. 413.
24 The Early Life, p. 241.
25 Ibid., pp. 294-295.
26 ii, 5, viii.
27 “Hardy as Panoramatist”, Saturday Review, Jan. 30, 1904, p. 137.
28 The Early Life, p. 271.
29 , 4, v.
30 The Early Life, p. 201.
31 Thomas Hardy, p. 135.
32 Desperate Remedies, p. 354 (Wessex edition, London, 1912).
33 Collected Poems (London, 1923), pp. 78–79.
34 The Later Years, p. 226.
35 The Early Life, p. 224.
36 i, Fore Scene.
37 ii, 6, v.
38 i, 4, iv.
39 Collected Poems, p. 577.
40 Ibid., pp. 7, 79.
41 Percy H. Boynton, London in English Literature (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1913), p. 164.
42 The Later Years, pp. 55–56.
43 The Early Life, pp. 179 and 285.
44 Ibid., p. 171. The image of a crowd or mob as a many-headed monster is of course an ancient one, going back to Plato, Horace, and others, and conspicuously found in Shakespeare. Hardy did not necessarily get it from his own experiences in London.
45 iii, 4, i.
46 iii, 6, v.
47 The Early Life, pp. 48–49.
48 The Later Years, p. 178.
49 The Dynasts, 2, iii.