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History of English Literature

Notes In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall,
Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married in 1874. Although he
later became estranged from his wife, her death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him. After her
death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship, and his Poems
1912-13 reflect upon her passing. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale,
who was 39 years his junior. However, he remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and
tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry.
Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on 11
January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed; the cause of death was
cited, on his death certificate, as "cardiac syncope", with "old age" given as a contributory factor.
His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion
because Hardy and his family and friends had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the
same grave as his first wife, Emma. However, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted
that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his
heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.
Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors of his estate burnt his letters and notebooks. Twelve
records survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of newspaper stories from the 1820s.
Research into these provided insight into how Hardy kept track of them and how he used them in
his later work.

Notes In the year of Hardy's death Mrs Hardy published The Early Life of Thomas Hardy,
1841-1891: compiled largely from contemporary notes, letters, diaries, and
biographical memoranda, as well as from oral information in conversations extending
over many years.

Hardy's work was admired by many writers of a younger generation including D. H. Lawrence
and Virginia Woolf. In his autobiography, "Goodbye to All that", Robert Graves recalls meeting
Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s. Hardy received him and his new wife warmly, and was
encouraging about his work.

24.2.1 Hardy Novel
When we speak of the Victorian novel we do not mean that there was a conscious school of English
novel, with a consciously common style and subject-matter, a school which began creating with
the reign of Queen Victoria and which came to an end with the end of that reign. The English are
too individualistic for such conformity. However, there can be no denying the fact that the English
novel during the second half of the 19th century, with the exception of one or two novelists, shows
certain common characteristics. The purpose of the chapter is to deal with those characteristics and
also to examine how far they are represented in the novels of Hardy.

Adherence to the Fielding Tradition: Loose Plots

For one thing, the Victorian novel continues to be largely in the Fielding tradition. The plot is
generally loose and ill-constructed. The main outline of the Victorian novel is the same. The story
consists of a large variety of character and incident clustering round the figure of the hero. These
characters and incidents are connected together rather loosely by an intrigue, ending with the
ringing of wedding bells. Thackeray follows, on the whole, this convention.

A Mixture of Strength and Weakness
Secondly, the Victorian novel is an extraordinary mixture of strength and weakness. There is too
much of false sentiment, flashy melodrama and lifeless characters. There is much that is improbable
and artificial in character and incident. Speaking generally, the Victorians fail to construct an

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