Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy.

HARDY, Thomas.

$600.00

Item Number: 118019

London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1924.

Finley bound early printing of the Golden Treasury Series Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy. Small octavo, bound in full crushed crimson levant morocco by Bayntun with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, elaborate gilt ruling and cornerpieces to the front and real panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, top edge gilt, ribbons bound in, marbled endpapers, tissue-guarded engraved title page. In very good condition.

A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England. 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.