Simon Gatrell

S. Gatrell

Never satisfied with what he wrote, Hardy was known to revise his work at every opportunity offered him by his publisher. He was anxious to make a living from his writing, but he also was concerned about telling the truth about the world as he saw it. In late Victorian England these two goals often conflicted. This study gives the first detailed account of how Hardy came to terms with this conflict. It integrates a study of his work on the texts of his novels from first draft to final revised edition, with a description of his dealings with magazine editors, publishers and printers, and their effect upon his writing.

A Textual Biography

Hardy, the Creator

Thomas Hardy

Phillip Mallett

'Miss Fancy Day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever I see, and just husband-high.' In the small Wessex village of Mellstock, the pretty young schoolmistress Fancy Day finds herself romantically entangled with three different men. Local lad and choir member Dick Dewy has to compete for her affections with a prosperous farmer and the new vicar, the Reverend Maybold. Maybold disrupts parish life and custom when he decidesto replace the three generations of singers and instrumentalists who make up the church choir with a modern organ, to be played by Fancy herself. The rivalries and intrigues that follow are played out with gentlehumour against an untouched rural scene that will not long survive. Looking back to the 1840s, and the world Hardy remembered as a child, Under the Greenwood Tree brings past and present, community and individual, loss and gain into perspective. This new edition combines a critically established text with an introduction and notes that illuminate one of Hardy's best-loved novels.

Simon Gatrell

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