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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Ford, Mark, 1962 June 24- author.

Title Thomas Hardy : half a Londoner / Mark Ford.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xvi, 305 pages) : illustrations, maps
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Summary Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own words, half a Londoner. Focusing on the formative five years in his early twenties when Hardy lived in the city, but also on his subsequent movement back and forth between Dorset and the capital, Mark Ford shows that the Dorset-London axis is critical to an understanding of his identity as a man and his achievement as a writer. Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner presents a detailed account of Hardy's London experiences, from his arrival as a shy, impressionable youth, to his embrace of radical views, to his lionization by upper-class hostesses eager to fĂȘte the creator of Tess. Drawing on Hardy's poems, letters, fiction, and autobiography, it offers a subtle, moving exploration of the author's complex relationship with the metropolis and those he met or observed there: publishers, fellow authors, street-walkers, benighted lovers, and the aristocratic women who adored his writing but spurned his romantic advances. The young Hardy's oscillations between the routines and concerns of Dorset's Higher Bockhampton and the excitements and dangers of London were crucial to his profound sense of being torn between mutually dependent but often mutually uncomprehending worlds. This fundamental self-division, Ford argues, can be traced not only in the poetry and fiction explicitly set in London but in novels as regionally circumscribed as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Introduction: In death divided -- The cries of London -- Only practical men are wanted here -- Crass clanging town -- Power & purpose -- The hand of E. (I) -- The hand of E. (II) -- Literary London (I) -- Literary London (II) -- The well-beloved -- London streets and interiors -- Epilogue: Christmas in the Elgin room.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Homes and haunts -- England -- London.
Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928.
England -- London.
Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Homes and haunts -- England -- Dorset.
England -- Dorset.
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography.
Authors, English.
Chronological Term 19th century
Genre/Form Biographies.
Subject Rural-urban relations in literature.
Rural-urban relations in literature.
Chronological Term 1800-1899
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Biographies.
Other Form: Print version: Ford, Mark, 1962 June 24- Thomas Hardy. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016 9780674737891 (DLC) 2016014043 (OCoLC)946032021
ISBN 9780674973275 (electronic book)
0674973275 (electronic book)
9780674737891
067473789X