Public domain photograph of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

A selective list of online literary criticism on Thomas Hardy, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites

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Literary Criticism

Armstrong, Tim. A chapter from Haunted Hardy: Poetry, History, Memory (Palgrave 2000). "Thomas Hardy’s poetry, like his life, is full of secrets."

Ferguson, Susan L. "Drawing fictional lines: dialect and narrative in the Victorian novel." On the uses of dialect in Hardy's novels and those of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Walter Scott, and others. Style, Spring 1998.

Grossman, Julie. "Hardy's Tess and 'The Photograph': images to die for." Criticism, Fall 1993.

Heptonstall, Geoffrey. A review of Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life by James Gibson. Contemporary Review, Sept. 1996.

Kreilkamp, Ivan. Pitying the Sheep in Far from the Madding Crowd. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2009.

Longo, Mary Ann Tighe. "Dysfunctional families and determinism in the fiction of Thomas Hardy." Dissertation, 1993, U of Nebraska. Lincoln.

Plotz, John. Motion sickness: spectacle and circulation in Thomas Hardy's "On the Western Circuit." Studies in Short Fiction, Summer 1996.

Shrimpton, Nicholas. "'Lane, You're a Perfect Pessimist': Pessimism and the English Fin de siècle" [and Arthur Schopenhauer]. Influence of Schopenhauer's philosophy of pessimism on Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, Byron, and others. Yearbook of English Studies, 2007.

Shumaker, Jeanette Roberts Abjection and degeneration in Thomas Hardy's "Barbara of the House of Grebe." College Literature, Spring 1999.

Spilka, Mark. A review of Thomas Hardy and Paradoxes of Love by H.M. Daleski (U of Missouri P 1997). Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 1997.

Introduction & Lighter Reading

"Thomas Hardy." Hardy's style, techniques, themes, and the cultural and historical context. Victorian Web, ed. George Landow.

Very brief introduction to Thomas Hardy from the Academy of American Poets.

Thomas, Jane. A substantial introduction to Thomas Hardy from the Literary Encyclopedia, 17 July 2001 (subscription service).

Introduction to Thomas Hardy's war poetry, a study guide for undergraduates. Universal Teacher, ed. Andrew Moore..

A study guide for Thomas Hardy's poetry contains 2-3 paragraph discussions of the following poems: The Going of the Battery, Drummer Hodge, The Man He Killed, Channel Firing, In Time of The Breaking of Nations, The Going, The Haunter, The Voice, During Wind and Rain, The Darkling Thrush, Shut Out That Moon, To an Unborn Pauper Child, The Oxen, Afterwards. Universal Teacher, ed. Andrew Moore.

"Thomas Hardy abandoned his career as a novelist because he was hurt by harsh reviews of Jude the Obscure, letters to be auctioned at Sotheby's have revealed." News article in The Independent, (London), Oct 9, 2001 by Anna Whitney.

The Thomas Hardy Association has some free material available for non-members.

The Nineteenth Century Novel

Frierson, William C. "The English Controversy over Realism in Fiction 1885-1895." First page of article only [history of the novel, Zola, Zolaism]. PMLA 43 (1928).

Taormina, Agatha. "The 19th Century Novel." A very brief overview of the major English and American novelists of the nineteenth century.

Removed Articles

Austin, Linda M. Hardy's elegiac "Poems of 1912-13" as a sequential response to mourning. Victorian Poetry 36 (Spring 1998) "Reading Depression in Hardy's 'Poems of 1912-13'" (removed).

Morgan, William W. http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Journal/Rethink.1.htm "Hardy's Return to Verse: Part 1--A New Chronology." On Hardy's decision to return to writing poetry and to give up writing fiction. At the Thomas Hardy Association (moved or removed).

http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Links/linksone/links_to_hardy.htm A list of Thomas Hardy-related web sites, compiled by Dr. Robert Schweik of the Thomas Hardy Association (moved or removed).

Rogers, Shannon. http://tech1.dccs.upenn.edu/~xconnect/volume1/i3/word/sr.html Hardy's interest in medievalism as expressive of the "ache of modernism" in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. CrossConnect, U of Pennsylvania (removed).

http://www.andover.edu/english/hardymisc/hardymsintro.html Reprint of Thomas Hardy--Novelist or Poet? (1929) by bibliophile A.E. Newton. The book considers whether Hardy was greater as a novelist or a poet (removed).

Fierz, Charles L. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_199901/ai_n8830888 "Polanski Misses." On the film version of Tess. Literature Film Quarterly, 1999 (removed).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/victorians/victorians.shtml A feature page on Victorian times from the BBC, contains social history written especially for the site (another BBC removal).

Extended article on The Return of the Native, by Maureen C. Howard, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute (removed).

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