Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited

Michael Millgate's classic biography of Thomas Hardy, great novelist and poet, was first published in 1982. Much new information about Hardy has since become available, often in volumes edited or co-edited by Millgate himself, and many established assumptions have been challenged and revolutionized by scholarly research. In this extensively revised, fully reconsidered, and considerably-expanded new edition Millgate, the world's leading Hardy scholar, draws not only upon these new materials but upon an exceptional understanding of Hardy gained from long immersion in the study of his life and work. Many large and small aspects of Hardy's life are here freshly illuminated, including his family background, his fumbling self-education as a poet, his difficult relations with his first wife and hers with his family, his sexual infatuations, his secret collaborations with aspiring women writers, his clandestine composition of his own official biography, and the memory-invoking techniques by which he sustained his remarkable creativity into extreme old age. Thorough, authoritative and eminently readable, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited will become the standard life of Hardy for a new generation.

Table of Contents:
Preface; 1. Hardys and Hands; 2. Bockhampton; 3. Dorchester; 4. London; 5. 'The Poor Man and the Lady'; 6. St. Juliot; 7. 'Far From the Madding Crowd'; 8. Marriage; 9. Sturminster Newton; 10. 'The Return of the Native'; 11. Illness; 12. Return to Dorchester; 13. Max Gate; 14. 'The Woodlanders'; 15. The Writing of Tess; 16. The Publication of Tess; 17. Florence Henniker; 18. The Making of 'Jude'; 19. The Publication of 'Jude'; 20. Keeping Separate; 21. Pessimistic Meliorist; 22. 'The Dynasts'; 23. After the Visit; 24. A Funeral; 25. A Second Marriage; 26. Life-Writing; 27. Tea at Max Gate; 28. Plays and Players; 29. Last Things; 30. Afterwards

About the Author :
Michael Millgate was born in England and educated at Cambridge University, before doing a PhD in American literature at Leeds. He moved to the University of Toronto in 1967, where he devoted his time to studying the life and works of Thomas Hardy. He has edited seven volumes of Hardy's letters, and the selected letters of his wives.

Review :
...the updated work is likely to be the standard biography for at least another twenty years. Noah Heringman, Studies in English Literature In Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited, Michael Millgate amplifies his much-admired 1982 life of the novelist, drawing on new archival material. This is one of those thick, well-written biographies one can happily lose oneself in. Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World