Thomas Hardy's new novel: it's his best yet

Our TV review of the new BBC dramatisation describes Tess of the D'Urbervilles as "a feel-bad epic". Much the same thought was expressed in The Times, more wordily, when the novel was first published in 1892: "The essence of tragedy is the loss of happiness by a hair's-breadth; and how often in the course of the story is that fine margin all but overpassed!"

The reviewer loved it: "Daring in its treatment of conventional ideas, pathetic in its sadness, and profoundly stirring by its tragic power. The very title, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman", is a challenge to convention".

Hardy was duly grateful, and wrote to the Editor, George Earle Buckle, to thank him; the letter is preserved in the Archive of The Times.

Max Gate
Dorchester
13.1.92

My dear Sir,

I cannot let your notice of my novel in to-day’s Times pass by without sending you a line to express my thanks and also my sense of the generous insight which recognizes the spirit and aim of a writer when his achievement is only too faulty.

Yours very faithfully
Thomas Hardy

Two years later, he wrote to Buckle again, this time saying thank you for a good review of Life’s Little Ironies.

Dear Mr. Buckle,

It was rather uncivil of me when we met this afternoon not to express a word of thanks for the kind review you gave my little book this morning. I repair the omission now, and can assure you that the notice greatly pleased me.

Yours sincerely
Thomas Hardy

Read more about the life of Thomas Hardy in The Times

Comments

[cam balkon]

he only laugh I ever got out of my first-year English tutor was when I quoted a critic of Hardy as saying that he combined "disbelief in the existence of God with a virulent dislike of Him for not existing". Or words to that effect; it was 28 years ago ...

[FinancialServicesRenoNV]

Greetings all members, I would just like to say hello and let you know that I'm happy to be a member - been a lurker long enough :) Hope to contribute some and gain some knowledge along the way....

[RICHARD MERWOOD]

It has been suggested that Hardy's decision to turn to publishing verse was partly due to the comfortable income the novels were making by then. He remained involved with prose for a time after Jude; three stories in A Changed Man are dated 1897, 1899 and 1900, and in 1897 he issed a revised text of The Well-Beloved, first serialised in 1892.

[Levi Stahl]

This is a pleasant coincidence: I found this entry not long after reading an entertaining anecdote of Hardy and Tess in _Thomas Hardy Remembered_. His acquaintance Desmond MacCarthy, in a BBC talk on Hardy's centenary, relayed the following comment from Hardy:

"Once when we were passing some spot in Tess he said to me, 'If I had thought that story was going to be such a success, I'd have made it a really good book.'"

While I think Hardy was surely being disingenuous, I do like having that statement to put alongside the comment from the letter above that his achievement was "only too faulty."

[Jane Stemp]

The only laugh I ever got out of my first-year English tutor was when I quoted a critic of Hardy as saying that he combined "disbelief in the existence of God with a virulent dislike of Him for not existing". Or words to that effect; it was 28 years ago ...

[Dr MaryAnn Wimsatt]

Hardy was a splendid, if increasingly gloomy, novelist. He was also a splendid poet. Thank you for making available the information about 'Tess.' I have taught the novel with success to American undergraduate students.

You probably know, by the way, that the hue and cry after Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' was published, Hardy decided to quit writing novels and turned to poetry, [I am condensing and paraphrasing what he said.]

The consummate, affecting irony of Hardy's life was that despite his doubts about the institutional religion of his day he continued to attend church.