Abstract

Hardy's Other Life

The article discusses books and authors. "The Later Years of Thomas Hardy," the English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy biography, by author Florence Hardy of which this is the second and concluding volume, seems to be little more than a chronicle of her husband's thoughts and movements as he himself recorded them in his journal. But she makes up for the meagerness of her method by having a great man to reveal, and she reveals him, or allows him to reveal himself, with a most interesting fullness. There will be more orderly and ingenious books about Hardy than this, for criticism surely is not done with him; but Mrs. Hardy will remain the authority on the subject, at least as long as she lives and keeps possession of the journals and the letters.