Under the Greenwood Tree - Hardy, Thomas

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Résumé :
Hardy's second published novel, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), the first of his great series of Wessex novels, was originally published anonymously. As part of the Cambridge Edition of the Novels and Stories of Thomas Hardy, this edition of the novel provides readers with an authoritative and accurate text of the novel...

Biographie:
Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. He destroyed the manuscript of his first, unplaced novel, but -- encouraged by mentor and friend George Meredith -- tried again. His important work took place in an area of southern England he called Wessex, named after the English kingdom that existed before the Norman Conquest.

Sommaire:
moreover it gives access to every revision that Hardy made, and to notations of all the errors introduced by printers' compositors. The annotated text is surrounded by an introduction that gives a very full account of the genesis, the writing and the publishing history of the novel. A range of appendices and comprehensive explanatory notes explore significant aspects of the composition, production and marketing of the novel, touched on in the introduction, to provide a full understanding of the nature and life of this classic work....