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Author Ford, Mark, 1962 June 24- author.

Title Thomas Hardy : half a Londoner / Mark Ford
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 305 pages) : illustrations, maps
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
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
Notes Print version record
Subject Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Homes and haunts -- England -- London
Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Homes and haunts -- England -- Dorset
SUBJECT Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 fast
Subject Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography
Rural-urban relations in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Authors, English
Homes
Rural-urban relations in literature
England -- Dorset
England -- London
Genre/Form Biographies
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780674973275
0674973275