{"product_id":"hardy-florence-emily-thomas-hardy-the-early-life-of-thomas-hardy-1840-1891-compiled-largely-from-contemporary-notes-letters-diaries-and-biographical-memoranda-as-well-as-from-oral-information-in-conversations-extending-over-many-years","title":"HARDY, Florence Emily; [Thomas HARDY]. The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 1840–1891: Compiled largely from Contemporary Notes, Letters, Diaries, and Biographical Memoranda, as well as from Oral Information in Conversations Extending over Many Years.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eInscribed by Florence Hardy\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHARDY, Florence Emily; [Thomas HARDY].\u003c\/strong\u003e The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 1840–1891: Compiled largely from Contemporary Notes, Letters, Diaries, and Biographical Memoranda, as well as from Oral Information in Conversations Extending over Many Years. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Macmillan and Co\u003c\/i\u003e. 1928.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[\u003ci\u003eand\u003c\/i\u003e:]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHARDY, Florence Emily; [Thomas HARDY].\u003c\/strong\u003e The Later Years of Thomas Hardy 1892–1928. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Macmillan and Co\u003c\/i\u003e. 1930.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo volumes, 8vo. Publisher’s olive-green cloth, lettered in gilt to spine, front board blocked in gold with TH monogram, top-edges gilt, in the dust-jackets, both priced 18\/- net to front flaps; vol I: pp. xii, 327, [1]; 14 plates, of which 6 photogravure portraits with tissue guards (including portrait frontispiece), tipped-in facsimile letter between pp. 68–69; vol II: pp. xi, [1], 286, [2 (advertisements)]; 12 plates, of which 3 photogravure portraits with tissue guards (including portrait frontispiece); vol I: lightly bumped to upper outer corners, small tear to cloth (c. 5 mm) at lower edge of spine, wrapper with light edgewear; vol II: some light spotting to fore-edge and endpapers, wrapper with light edgewear; a near fine set in like wrappers; inscribed in black ink to Howard Bliss by Florence Hardy to front free endpaper of vol I (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst editions of the posthumously published \u003ci\u003eLife\u003c\/i\u003e of Hardy, the authorship credited to Hardy’s second wife Florence, but an autobiography in all but name; the first volume is inscribed by Florence Hardy to the distinguished Hardy collector and family friend Howard Bliss; notably scarce in inscribed state.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the preface to these two substantial volumes, Florence Hardy explains that her husband long resisted the idea of a biography, that he lacked ‘sufficient admiration for himself’ to write one. Disturbed by the appearance of inaccurate accounts of his life, however, he eventually agreed that the facts of his career should be recorded, contributing chapter plans, personal recollections, and material drawn from his notebooks, diaries, and correspondence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough attributed to Florence Emily Hardy, ‘ever since the essential facts of its authorship first became known in 1940 it has been customary to speak of it as an autobiography’ (Millgate). The \u003ci\u003eLife\u003c\/i\u003e, which traverses the author’s life, from Dorset childhood to the controversies of later years, and, crucially, the growth of a great novelist and poet was, it seems, almost entirely Hardy’s own work. ‘[W]ritten in strictest privacy’, Millgate explains:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe sheets [of Hardy’s MS were] slipped under the blotting paper whenever anyone came to the study [and then] typed up by Florence in three copies, a ribbon copy and two carbons. Hardy would revise and correct the third of these copies, and then pass it to his wife for her to transfer the changes into copy two and subsequently, when his final approval had been given to them, into the ribbon copy destined for the printer – which thus showed no visible trace of his participation. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHardy granted Florence permission to add or cut whatever she saw fit prior to publication, so it is reasonable to assume that the \u003ci\u003eLife\u003c\/i\u003e is to some degree shaped by her perspective as a widow and by her stewardship of Hardy’s life and legacy – not least his haunted, and indeed haunting, preoccupation with his first wife Emma Gifford. Owing to the extraordinary series of poems Hardy wrote in Emma’s memory, Florence has tended to be overshadowed. There was a thirty-nine-year age gap between them, but recently discovered letters make it clear that she was very much in love with Hardy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘Although he is much older than myself’, she wrote in February 1914, ‘it is a genuine love match – on my part, at least, for I suppose I ought not to speak for him. At any rate I know I have for a husband one of the kindest, most humane men in the world.’ In a letter of 1932, four years after Hardy’s death, she thanks the same correspondent for his ‘kind words of sympathy about my great loss. It was such a wonderful thing to live in close association with that great mind \u0026amp; that noble personality. After having lived 14 years with such a companion it is little wonder that I feel intolerably lonely – \u0026amp; find the world very empty.’  \u003ci\u003eEarly Life\u003c\/i\u003e was published 2 November 1928, Later Years following on 29 April 1930, both in editions of 3,000 copies.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: \u003cstrong\u003eVolume I inscribed ‘for Howard Bliss | with kind regards from | Florence E Hardy. | January 12th, 1929.’\u003c\/strong\u003e Bliss (1804–1977), younger brother of the composer Sir Arthur Bliss, was a friend of the Hardys and also a great collector of the author’s books, manuscripts and related materials. One of the ‘four men who have assembled Hardy collections of remarkable extent and quality’ acknowledged in Richard Purdy’s Hardy bibliography, his own letters to and from the Hardys are now held in various archives (including the Hardy Archive in Dorset). Much of his collection is now held in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLaid into \u003ci\u003eEarly Life\u003c\/i\u003e is an L-shaped piece of lined paper, with Bliss’s notes in ink and pencil to both sides. The notes in black ink to one side refer to the holograph manuscript of Hardy’s 1873 novel \u003ci\u003eA Pair of Blue Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e, which Bliss owned (now in the Berg Collection). Headed ‘p. 31 of MS.’, Bliss has transcribed the quatrain from Shelley’s ‘Lines’: ‘When the Lamp is Shattered’, quoted by Elfride in Chapter 3 of the novel. To the bottom left, he has written ‘send proofs of | this number | for Mr Thos Hardy | care of John Gifford By[?] | Kirland House | nr. Bodmin’. The quotation, it seems, is from a marginal note in Hardy’s MS. Millgate cites the same note in his 1982 Hardy biography, his source being Bliss’ manuscript in the Berg. The ‘proofs’ mentioned are those of the first instalment of \u003ci\u003eA Pair of Blue Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e, serialised in \u003ci\u003eTinsley’s Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e. Beside the Shelley quotation is a further quatrain, from the song ‘The Banks of Allan Water’, sang by Bathsheba in Chapter 23 of \u003ci\u003eFar from the Madding Crowd\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother reference to the \u003ci\u003eBlue Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e MS appears overleaf: ‘P[.] 7 of MS. There | is however something | more than the | love + respect | of his biographer | to prompt | this reticence | (not to describe his | face feature by | feature)’ (from Chapter 1). In the published version, ‘love’ and ‘respect’ are reversed, and it is unclear whether the concluding parenthesis is Bliss’ own précis or an earlier variant in the MS. The remainder of the page consists of pencilled notes, headed ‘Reprinted from “The Western Morning News” Thursday March 15. 1928’, followed by notes from an article printed in that issue (pp. 5, 8, 10) in which an unnamed correspondent gives an account of a visit to the Rectory of St Juliot Church, where Hardy was living when he wrote \u003ci\u003eA Pair of Blue Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e, and where he met Emma Gifford (sister-in-law to the rector at the time), who later became the first Mrs Hardy (see pp. 96–105 in \u003ci\u003eEarly Life\u003c\/i\u003e). The correspondent is shown by the incumbent rector ‘three of the most treasured possessions of the Church’: two sketches and a single photograph of the church, the sketches by Hardy and the photograph signed by him. Bliss has transcribed the details of each in a numbered list. The Berg collection contains numerous sketches, watercolours and photographs of the church and its environs by Hardy and Emma, all from Bliss, but these three items – which he may have been intent upon acquiring (hence the note) – are not listed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLaid into the same volume is a small newspaper cutting concerning Helen Paterson, Hardy’s favourite illustrator, for whom, he confessed in a letter to Edmund Gosse, he harboured ‘quite romantical’ feelings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePurdy, pp. 262–67, 268–73. See Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003e1982\u003c\/i\u003e); \u003ci\u003eGuide to the Thomas Hardy collection of papers 1870–1964\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003ebulk 1870–1928\u003c\/i\u003e], \u003ci\u003eThe New York Public Library Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eonline\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125357\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":65052312863097,"sku":"2125357","price":1000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125357.jpg?v=1793380580","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/hardy-florence-emily-thomas-hardy-the-early-life-of-thomas-hardy-1840-1891-compiled-largely-from-contemporary-notes-letters-diaries-and-biographical-memoranda-as-well-as-from-oral-information-in-conversations-extending-over-many-years","provider":"Sotheran's","version":"1.0","type":"link"}