April FitzLyon
Thomas The Obscure
Thoms Hardy, A Biography
By Michael Millgate
Oxford University Press 657pp £15 order from our bookshop
Thomas Hardy, the most devious of men, left a number of minefields and boobytraps for his future biographers. But he has mel his match in Michael Millgate, author of Thomas Hardy: His career as a novelist (1971) and co-editor of Hardy’ s Collected Letters, who has now produced a mammoth academic biography. Henry James, who foresaw the way modem biography would develop (but failed to avoid Leon Edel’ s scalpel himself) observed that ‘ the cunning of the inquirer ... will exceed in subtlety and ferocity anything we today conceive’ ; and he warned ‘ the pale victim’ that he would only be safe from posterity ‘ with every track covered, every paper burnt and every letter unanswered.’
Hardy’ s technique was rather different; he did not bum all papers, but wrote ambiguous ones; he left misleading autobiographical writings, and made his wife pose as the author; he left teasing little signposts in his works, particularly in the choice of names, in order to lure his biographer down
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'As we examined more and more data from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters ... we were amazed to find that there is almost never a case for permanently moving people out of the contaminated area after a big nuclear accident.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying
'This problem has dogged Labour’s efforts to become the "natural party of government", a sobriquet which the Conservatives have acquired over decades, despite their far less compelling record of achievement.'
Charles Clarke on Labour's civil wars.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/comrade-versus-comrade
'Lamb has always attracted admirers ... Yet, as Eric G Wilson observes, "Dream-Child" is the first full-scale biography in over a century.'
Edward Weech on the life and work of Charles Lamb.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-man-with-the-golden-pun