Thomas Hardy: The Wessex Novels (1991)•
Reginald G. Eves: Thomas Hardy (1924)Thomas Hardy: The Wessex Novels (1991)
[Bookmark, Devonport - 4/1/2023]:
Novels of Thomas Hardy. 6 vols. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- Under the Greenwood Tree, or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. 1872. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Angela Thirlwell (1989)
- Far from the Madding Crowd. 1874. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Bel Mooney (1985)
- The Return of the Native. 1878. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by R. M. (1971)
- The Trumpet-Major: John Loveday, A Soldier in the War with Buonaparte and Robert His Brother, A Tale. 1880. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Paul I. Webb (1990)
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Story of a Man of Character. 1886. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by R. M. (1968)
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Faithfully Presented. 1891. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Elspeth Sandys (1988)
There was a time - in the late 1970s/early 1980s, probably, judging by the dates of most of the books by him I own - when I was quite obsessed with that great gloom-merchant Thomas Hardy. I read all of his novels and stories, then the whole of his Collected Poems. My passion for his work has cooled somewhat since then, but I still get the yen to go back to it from time to time.
I was poking around Bookmarks, a second-hand bookshop in Devonport, sometime just before Christmas, when I ran across the bound Folio Society edition of six of his principal novels pictured above. I don't need it, I told myself. I have all his novels already. Most, admittedly, in scruffy old paperbacks, but still perfectly serviceable copies.
As the New Year came in, however, I found my thoughts turning again and again to that pretty set of Hardy books down by the seaside in Devonport. I kept on hoping that somebody else had bought it, thus removing temptation from my path. But, when I returned, sure enough, there it was.
And so, despite all my resolutions to stop buying so many books, I succumbed to its charms. In the meantime I'd ascertained that the Folio Society has actually published all 18 of Hardy's novels and short story collections in (fairly) uniform editions, with the same cover design and woodcuts by Peter Reddick. Here they are, in fact:
Beautiful though they are, these are by no means the most desirable editions of Hardy. Richard Purdy's annotated bibliography, which I bought some years ago - described on its first appearance as a "virtually flawless book" - gives some idea of the full complexity of his publishing history, including all the mass-market, limited and gift editions. It's enough to make your head swim.
The Book Collector reviewer went on to say:
While providing in full and with scrupulous exactitude all requisite bibliographical data [Purdy's book] also supplements the hitherto printed accounts of Hardy’s life, gives the publishing history of his novels, short stories and poems, and serves in general as a companion to the whole of his works.In particular, when it comes to both the prose and the poetry, the Oxford English Texts editions take some beating. For sheer scrupulous attention to detail, you can't really get past their five-volume Poetical Works:
The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Samuel Hynes. 5 vols. Oxford English Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982-1995.
- Wessex Poems; Poems of the Past and Present; Time's Laughingstocks (1983)
- Satires of Circumstance; Moments of Vision; Late Lyrics and Earlier (1984)
- Human Shows; Winter Words; Uncollected Poems (1985)
- The Dynasts, Parts First & Second (1995)
- The Dynasts, Part Third; The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall; The Play of 'Saint George'; 'O Jan, O Jan, O Jan' (1995)
Or, for that matter, the multi-volume Collected Letters:
The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Richard Little Purdy, Michael Millgate & Keith Wilson. 8 vols. Oxford English Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977-2012.
- 1840–1892. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1977)
- 1893–1901. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1980)
- 1902–1908. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1982)
- 1909–1913. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1984)
- 1914–1919. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1985)
- 1920–1925. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1987)
- 1926–1927: with Addenda, Corrigenda, and General Index. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate (1988)
- Further Letters: 1861–1927. Ed. Michael Millgate & Keith Wilson (2012)
The only downside is that they're so prohibitively expensive to buy.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles. 1891. Ed. Juliet Grindle & Simon Gatrell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.As for the novels, the only one I actually own in the Oxford series is Tess of the d'Urbervilles. But so far as I can see from the Oxford Scholarly Editions website, they haven't yet published any others - with the sole exception of The Woodlanders:
The Woodlanders. 1887. Ed. Dale Kramer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.For normal, non-specialist purposes, though, I can certainly recommend Macmillan's New Wessex edition (issued in a hurry in the mid-1970s to take advantage of Hardy's copyrights before they expired):
Or, alternatively, there are the Penguin English Library / Penguin Classics editions of most of his major works (published from 1978 onwards once they were out of copyright):
I've already written elsewhere about this omnibus edition of Hardy's short stories, which collects the four collections published during his lifetime:
Wessex Tales (1888)All of these are still readily available in modern reprints. The three-part New Wessex edition of his short stories (now collected in a single commodious paperback) does, however, include a supplementary volume of overlooked and uncollected material:
A Group of Noble Dames (1891)
Life's Little Ironies (1894)
A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913)
Thomas Hardy: Wessex Tales / A Group of Noble Dames (1977)
Thomas Hardy: Time's Litte Ironies / A Changed Man and Other Tales (1977)
Thomas Hardy: Old Mrs Chundle and Other Stories / The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (1977)The very few items left over from this may be found in Pamela Dalziel's exhaustively annotated Oxford edition of The Excluded and Collaborative Stories:
All of which brings us to the somewhat more vexed topic of Hardy's poetry. Certainly it's an acquired taste. Like Herman Melville's, Hardy's verse seems at times to avoid not simply poetic euphony but most of the other conventions of English syntax. Consider this, for example:
Without, Not Within HerI've always been a bit puzzled by that line "not inly were" ...
It was what you bore with you, Woman,
Not inly were,
That throned you from all else human,
However fair!
It was that strange freshness you carried
Into a soul
Whereon no thought of yours tarried
Two moments at all.
And out from his spirit flew death,
And bale, and ban,
Like the corn-chaff under the breath
Of the winnowing-fan.
On the other hand, it's no accident that Auden and other thirties poets saw Hardy as their guiding poetic star. Clumsy though he was at times, there was a titanic power to his best poems which seemed inseparable from their lack of superficial polish. They were felt in a way most contemporary English poetry was not. Take some of his war verses, for instance:
In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’Perhaps best of all, though, are those amazing love poems of 1912-13, a long collective lament occasioned by the death of his estranged first wife.
I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
At Castle Boterel
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, ―
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story ? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is — that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.
In any case, whether or not Hardy was greater as a poet or a novelist, his Collected Poems has become one of the classic volumes of English poetry. It includes all eight of his published collections:
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
Satires of Circumstance (1914)
Moments of Vision (1917)
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1922)
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928)
When it comes to the Complete Poems, the situation is a little more complex. The New Wessex edition featured James Gibson's revised text of the eight books plus the songs from The Dynasts and a few residual verses such as "Domicilium".
A few years later Gibson's publishers agreed to put out the variorum edition of all the variants in the different printings of Hardy's poems which he'd been working on for many years past. He mentions in the introduction to this having been refused permission to check some manuscript sources:
because, not appreciating the monopolistic conditions which prevail in some fields of American scholarship, I omitted when I began my research to reserve for myself access to manuscripts whose whereabouts were well known and required no intensive research. [p.xx]Decoded, this seems to imply that sole rights in consulting these manuscripts had been reserved in advance by some other (unnamed) scholar.
Internal evidence suggests that this may have been Professor Samuel Hynes, whose Oxford English Texts edition must have already been in progress at this point. Gibson calculates that the exclusions involved some fifteen of the 115 surviving manuscripts, and quotes the names of two of their owners - Frederick B. Adams and Richard L. Purdy - both of whom figure in Hynes's Acknowledgements. It does seem a bit unsporting of Hynes to have denied access in this way, but of course it could have been his publishers rather than he himself who demanded it.
Behaviour of this sort is, unfortunately, not unprecedented in the history of other Oxford Scholarly Editions, witness the even more blatantly monopolistic behaviour of John Clare's Oxford editor Eric Robinson, as I've discussed in some detail here.
It's when we get to the biographies, though, that the situation becomes really complicated.
It appears that late in life Hardy conceived a particular horror of having lies and distortions about him available in print. In particular, he'd read an unathorised attempt at a 'life and works' by an American author, and had been appalled by it. He therefore came up with a plan to mitigate such intrusions on his privacy.
He gathered his old letters and journals together, sorted them more or less chronologically, and asked his wife Florence to use these materials to write a sample chapter or two of an "authorised" life and letters. She was, after all, a fairly accomplished writer of occasional journalism, and would have the advantage of having her subject ready to hand.
It didn't work. Hardy was distinctly unimpressed by her efforts. Rather than abandoning the whole scheme, though, he decided to write the whole book himself - in the third person - except for the last couple of chapters, of course (unlike Moses, he didn't quite feel up to providing an account of his own death), and to arrange for it to be published under her name after his death.
This would have the dual advantage of forestalling other biographers as well as putting his own view of matters squarely in the spotlight. And so it went. Florence Hardy was not particularly keen on attaching her name to a book she hadn't written, but for the sake of peace she agreed to do it. She did revolt a bit in the latter stages of the scheme, however: abridging some of his interminable accounts of important honours he'd won and famous people he'd met in the second volume of the work.
They got away with it surprisingly easily. There were rumours that he might have had a hand in it, of course, but that was hardly surprising. It wasn't really until Michael Millgate's 1984 edition of what must be referred to as Hardy's autobiography without Florence's various emendations and changes that the full extent of the old man's efforts became apparent.
But what, exactly, did he have to hide? Certainly he'd been less than kind at times to his first wife, Emma - he wrote a whole series of repentant poems about her shortly after her death (also shortly after marrying his second wife, Florence, which must have been great for domestic relations). Perhaps there were other things. No doubt we'll never know.
There are three major modern biographies, written in the post reliance-on-the-autobiography period. The first, very readable account, in two parts, is by Robert Gittings (1911-1992), the biographer of Keats. With his wife Jo Manton, he also wrote The Second Mrs. Hardy, a biography of Florence Dugdale, the young school-teacher who watched over Hardy's legacy for so many years.
The second major biography is by Professor Michael Millgate (1929- ). It first appeared in 1982, but has more recently been reissued as Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited. It's a more standard Academic biography than Gittings', but his status as one of the principal authorities on the subject makes it probably the most useful one to consult.
There's now another one by Claire Tomalin (1933- ), biographer of Charles Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, amongst many other subjects. I haven't yet read it, but I imagine it will provide a rather different slant on Hardy's relations with his two wives, in particular.
As far as Hardy himself was concerned, the best kind of commentary on his work was purely fact-based and geographical. It wasn't that authors hadn't created their own private towns and regions before: Trollope's fictional Barsetshire, for instance - or George Eliot's Middlemarch. Hardy's Wessex, though, took the game considerably further than that.
All the major towns and regions in his version of England's West Country acquired new names: "Casterbridge" for Dorchester, for instance; "Christminster" for Oxford; "Wintoncester" for Winchester ... You get the general idea. This enabled him to think of Dorset and its environs as "a merely realistic dream country", as he put it in his late, 1895 preface to Far from the Madding Crowd.
Hardy's 1898 meeting with photographer Hermann Lea was therefore a most fortuitous one. Lea, in close consultation with the author, undertook to record and photograph all the settings of the various novels - thus setting off a tourist boom which has lasted to this day.
Who, for instance, can contemplate Stonehenge without thinking of Tess's last night sleeping on the altar stone? Or cross Egdon Heath without thinking of the opening pages of The Return of the Native? Well, lots of people, probably - but such powerful visualisations remain a potent influence on such avatars as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo.
Books I own are marked in bold:
- The Poor Man and the Lady. [unpublished / ms. lost] (1867)
- Desperate Remedies: A Novel. [Novels of Ingenuity] (1871)
- Desperate Remedies: A Novel. 1871. Introduction by C. J. P. Beatty. The New Wessex Edition. 1975. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1977.
- Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1872)
- Under the Greenwood Tree, or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. 1872. Introduction by Cecil Day Lewis. 1958. Collins Classics. London: William Collins Sons & co. Ltd., 1970.
- Under the Greenwood Tree, or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. 1872. Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. 1974. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1978.
- Under the Greenwood Tree, or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. 1872. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Angela Thirlwell. 1989. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel. [Romances and Fantasies] (1873)
- A Pair of Blue Eyes. 1873. Introduction by Ronald Blythe. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1975.
- Far from the Madding Crowd. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1874)
- Far from the Madding Crowd. 1874. Introduction by John Bayley. Notes by Christine Winfield. 1974. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1978.
- Far from the Madding Crowd. 1874. Ed. Ronald Blythe. 1978. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
- Far from the Madding Crowd. 1874. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Bel Mooney. 1985. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. [Novels of Ingenuity] (1876)
- The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. 1876. Introduction by Robert Gittings. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1975.
- The Return of the Native. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1878)
- The Return of the Native. 1878. Introduction by Derwent May. 1974. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1978.
- The Return of the Native. 1878. Ed. George Woodcock. 1978. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
- The Return of the Native. 1878. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by R. M. 1971. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- The Trumpet-Major. [Romances and Fantasies] (1880)
- The Trumpet-Major: John Loveday, A Soldier in the War with Buonaparte and Robert His Brother, First Mate in the Merchant Service. A Tale. 1880. Ed. Ray Evans. The Macmillan Students’ Hardy. London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1975.
- The Trumpet-Major: John Loveday, A Soldier in the War with Buonaparte and Robert His Brother, A Tale. 1880. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Paul I. Webb. 1990. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- A Laodicean: A Story of To-day. [Novels of Ingenuity] (1881)
- A Laodicean: A Story of To-day. 1881. Introduction by Barbara Hardy. Notes by Ernest Hardy. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1975.
- Two on a Tower: A Romance. [Romances and Fantasies] (1882)
- Two on a Tower. 1882. Introduction by F. B. Pinion. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1975.
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1886)
- The Mayor of Casterbridge. 1886. Introduction by Ian Gregor. Notes by Bryn Caless. 1974. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1978.
- The Mayor of Casterbridge. 1886. Ed. Martin Seymour-Smith. 1978. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Story of a Man of Character. 1886. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by R. M. 1968. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- The Woodlanders. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1887)
- The Woodlanders. 1887. Pocket Papermacs. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. / New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969.
- The Woodlanders. 1887. Ed. James Gibson. Introduction by Ian Gregor. 1981. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1891)
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman. 1891. Introduction by P. N. Furbank. 1974. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1978.
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles. 1891. Ed. David Skilton. Introduction by A. Alvarez. 1978. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles. 1891. Ed. Juliet Grindle & Simon Gatrell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Faithfully Presented. 1891. Wood Engravings by Peter Reddick. Introduction by Elspeth Sandys. 1988. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
- The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. [Romances and Fantasies] (1892 / 1897)
- The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. 1897. Introduction by J. Hillis Miller. Notes by Edward Mendelson. The New Wessex Edition. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1975.
- The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved & The Well-Beloved. 1892 & 1897. Ed. Patricia Ingham. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997.
- Jude the Obscure. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1895)
- Jude the Obscure. 1895. Ed. T. R. Wightman. The Macmillan Students’ Hardy. London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1975.
- Jude the Obscure. 1895. Ed. C. H. Sisson. 1978. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- Wessex Tales. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1888) [WT]
- A Group of Noble Dames. [Romances and Fantasies] (1891) [GND]
- Life's Little Ironies. [Novels of Character and Environment] (1894) [LLI]
- A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913) [CM]
- The Short Stories (1928)
- The Short Stories: Wessex Tales; Life's Little Ironies; A Group of Noble Dames; A Changed Man and Other Tales. 1888, 1894, 1891, 1913. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1928.
- Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, Reminiscences (1966) [PW]
- Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, Reminiscences. Ed. Harold Orel. 1966. London: Macmillan, 1967.
- Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, Reminiscences. Ed. Harold Orel. 1966. Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1969.
- Old Mrs Chundle and Other Stories (1977) [OMC]
- Old Mrs Chundle and Other Stories, with The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall. Ed. F. B. Pinion. The New Wessex Edition of the Stories of Thomas Hardy, vol. 3. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1977.
- The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales (1979)
- The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales. Ed. Susan Hill. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
- Collected Short Stories (1988)
- Collected Short Stories. The New Wessex Edition of the Stories of Thomas Hardy. Ed. F. B. Pinion. 1977. Introduction by Desmond Hawkins. 1988. The Papermac Hardy. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1994.
- The Excluded and Collaborative Stories. Ed. Pamela Dalziel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. [EC]
- How I Built Myself a House (1865) [PW] [EC]
- Destiny and a Blue Cloak (1874) [OMC] [EC]
- The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing (1877) [OMC] [EC]
- An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (1878) [OMC] [EC]
- An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress. 1878. Ed. Terry Coleman. London: Hutchinson & Co (Publishers) Ltd., 1976.
- The Duchess of Hamptonshire (1878) [GND]
- The Distracted Preacher (1879) [WT]
- Fellow-Townsmen (1880) [WT]
- The Honourable Laura (1881) [GND]
- What the Shepherd Saw (1881) [CM]
- A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four (1882) [WT]
- The Three Strangers (1883) [WT]
- The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid (1883) [CM]
- Interlopers at the Knap (1884) [WT]
- A Mere Interlude (1885) [CM]
- A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork (1885) [CM]
- Alicia's Diary (1887) [CM]
- The Waiting Supper (1887–88) [CM]
- The Withered Arm (1888) [WT]
- A Tragedy of Two Ambitions (1888) [LLI]
- The First Countess of Wessex (1889) [GND]
- Anna, Lady Baxby (1890) [GND]
- The Lady Icenway (1890) [GND]
- Lady Mottisfont (1890) [GND]
- The Lady Penelope (1890) [GND]
- The Marchioness of Stonehenge (1890) [GND]
- Squire Petrick's Lady (1890) [GND]
- Barbara of the House of Grebe (1890) [GND]
- The Melancholy Hussar of The German Legion (1890) [WT]
- Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir (1891) [LLI]
- The Winters and the Palmleys (1891) [LLI]
- For Conscience' Sake (1891) [LLI]
- Incident in the Life of Mr. George Crookhill (1891) [LLI]
- The Doctor's Legend (1891) [OMC] [EC]
- Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk (1891) [LLI]
- The History of the Hardcomes (1891) [LLI]
- Netty Sargent's Copyhold (1891) [LLI]
- On the Western Circuit (1891) [LLI]
- A Few Crusted Characters: Introduction (1891) [LLI]
- The Superstitious Man's Story (1891) [LLI]
- Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver (1891) [LLI]
- To Please His Wife (1891) [LLI]
- The Son's Veto (1891) [LLI]
- Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician (1891) [LLI]
- Our Exploits At West Poley (1892–93) [OMC] [EC]
- Our Exploits at West Poley. 1892-93. Introduction by Richard L. Purdy. 1952. Illustrated by John Lawrence. 1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
- Master John Horseleigh, Knight (1893) [CM]
- The Fiddler of the Reels (1893) [LLI]
- An Imaginative Woman (1894) [LLI]
- The Spectre of the Real (1894) [EC]
- A Committee-Man of 'The Terror' (1896) [CM]
- The Duke's Reappearance (1896) [CM]
- The Grave by the Handpost (1897) [CM]
- A Changed Man (1900) [CM]
- Enter a Dragoon (1900) [CM]
- Blue Jimmy: The Horse Stealer (1911) [EC]
- Old Mrs. Chundle (1929) [OMC] [EC]
- The Unconquerable (1992) [EC]
- Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
- Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
- Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
- Satires of Circumstance (1914)
- Moments of Vision (1917)
- Collected Poems (1919)
- Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1922)
- Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)
- Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928)
- Collected Poems (1930)
- The Collected Poems. ['Wessex Poems and Other Verses' (1898); 'Poems of the Past and the Present' (1901); 'Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses' (1909); 'Satires of Circumstance' (1914); Moments of Vision' (1917); 'Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses' (1922); 'Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles' (1925); 'Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres' (1928)]. 1930. London: Macmillan, 1974.
- A Selection of Poems. Ed. W. E. Williams (1960)
- Thomas Hardy: A Selection of Poems. Ed. W. E. Williams. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.
- The Complete Poems. Ed. James Gibson (1976)
- The Variorum Edition of The Complete Poems. Ed. James Gibson (1979)
- The Variorum Edition of The Complete Poems. Ed. James Gibson. London: Macmillan, 1979.
- The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Samuel Hynes. 5 vols. Oxford English Texts (1982-1995)
- Volume 1: Wessex Poems; Poems of the Past and the Present; Time’s Laughingstocks. 1898, 1901, 1909. Illustrated by the Author. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
- The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon (1904-08)
- Part 1 (1904)
- Part 2 (1906)
- Part 3 (1908)
- Included in: The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon, Part III / The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall. 1908 & 1923. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1925.
- The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon. 1904, 1906, 1908. Introduction by John Wain. Pocket Papermacs. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. / New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.
- The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse (1923)
- Included in: The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon, Part III / The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall. 1908 & 1923. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1925.
- Included in: Old Mrs Chundle and Other Stories, with The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall. Ed. F. B. Pinion. The New Wessex Edition of the Stories of Thomas Hardy, vol. 3. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1977.
- Hardy, Florence. The Life of Thomas Hardy: The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891; The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928. 1928 & 1930. London: Studio Editions, 1994.
- The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy: An Edition on New Principles of the Materials Previously Drawn upon for The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 1840–1891 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy 1892–1928 Published over the Name of Florence Emily Hardy. Ed. Michael Millgate. 1984. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1989.
- Thomas Hardy's Public Voice: The Essays, Speeches, and Miscellaneous Prose. Ed. Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
- The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy: With an Appendix Including the Unpublished Passages in the Original Typescripts of the Life of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Richard H. Taylor. London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1978.
- Thomas Hardy's 'Studies, Specimens &c.' Notebook. Ed. Pamela Dalziel & Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
- ‘Dearest Emmie’: Thomas Hardy’s Letters to His First Wife. Ed. Carl J. Weber. London: Macmillan and Company Limited / New York: St. Martins’ Press Inc., 1963.
- One Rare Fair Woman: Thomas Hardy’s Letters to Florence Henniker, 1893-1922. Ed. Evelyn Hardy & F. B. Pinion. Coral Gables, Florida: University Of Miami Press, 1972.
- The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Richard Little Purdy, Michael Millgate & Keith Wilson. 8 vols. Oxford English Texts (1977-2012)
- The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Volume III: 1902-1908. Ed. Richard Little Purdy & Michael Millgate. 8 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
- Cox, R. G. ed. Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage. The Critical Heritage Series. Ed. B. C. Southam. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
- Firor, Ruth A. Folkways in Thomas Hardy. 1931. A Perpetua Book. New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, Inc., 1962.
- Gittings, Robert. Young Thomas Hardy. 1975. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
- Gittings, Robert. The Older Hardy. 1978. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
- Gittings, Robert, & Jo Manton. The Second Mrs. Hardy. 1979. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
- Hardy, Evelyn, & Robert Gittings, ed. Some Recollections by Emma Hardy, Thomas Hardy’s First Wife, Together with Some Relevant Poems by Thomas Hardy. 1961. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
- Kay-Robinson, Denys. The First Mrs. Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1979.
- Lea, Hermann. Thomas Hardy’s Wessex: Illustrated from Photographs by the Author. 1913. London: Macmillan Ltd., 1977.
- Lea, Hermann. The Hardy Guides: A Guide to the West Country. . Ed. Gregory Stevens Cox. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles; Jude the Obscure; The Woodlanders; A Pair of Blue Eyes and other Works
- Far from the Madding Crowd; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Under the Greenwood Tree; The Return of the Native and other Works
- Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography. 1982. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
- Pinion, F. B. A Hardy Companion: a Guide to the Works of Thomas Hardy and Their Background. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. / New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968.
- Purdy, Richard Little. Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study. 1954. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
- Tomalin, Claire. Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man. 2006. London: Penguin, 2007.
Novels:
Collections:
Short Stories:
Poetry:
Drama:
Non-fiction:
Notebooks:
Letters:
Secondary:
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- category - English Prose (pre-1900): Nineteenth Century
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