Introduction

Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

The Introduction will begin with a brief anecdotal account of Hardy’s personal relationship to the ‘rustic’ food of his childhood, showing how historical events provide the impetus for his fiction. An overview of Hardy’s philosophy will then substantiate the use of ‘realism’ in his novels as a record of the nineteenth century before responding to criticism of Hardy’s fictional characters as romantic and his settings as idealistic. The Introduction will also confront criticism of Hardy’s inability to reconcile mythology with real events, folklore with bucolic pastoralism and fiction with social realism. Finally, the rationale for the ordering of the novels in this book will be given, explaining how historical events provide the chronology of Hardy’s fiction and reveal his concerns with food production.

Keywords

Hungry forties Food production Food consumption Dorsetshire labourer Wessex 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Works Cited

  1. Albert Guerard, Albert. Thomas Hardy: The Novels and Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949.Google Scholar
  2. Burnett, John. Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day. London: Routledge, 1989.Google Scholar
  3. Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology. London: NLB, 1976.Google Scholar
  4. Fay, C. R. The Corn Laws and Social England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.Google Scholar
  5. Franklin, Michael J. ‘Market-Faces’ and Market Forces: [Corn-]Factors in the Moral Economy of Casterbridge.’ The Review of English Studies, New Series, 59, No. 240 (June 2008): 426–448.Google Scholar
  6. ———. ‘The Public Hardy’ in Thomas Hardy in Context, edited by Phillip Mallett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
  7. Guerard, Albert J. Thomas Hardy: The Novels and Stories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949.Google Scholar
  8. Hardy, Florence Emily. The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 1840–1891. New York: Macmillan, 1928.Google Scholar
  9. ———. The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928. New York: Macmillan, 1930.Google Scholar
  10. Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd [1874]. London: Penguin, 1978.Google Scholar
  11. __________. Under the Greenwood Tree [1872]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
  12. ———.The Trumpet-Major and Robert His Brother [1880]. London: Penguin, 1987.Google Scholar
  13. ———. The Mayor of Casterbridge [1886]. Oxford: OUP, 2008.Google Scholar
  14. ———. Tess of the d’Urbervilles [1891]. London: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
  15. ———. Jude the Obscure [1895]. London: Penguin, 1985.Google Scholar
  16. Hardy, Thomas. ‘The Dorsetshire Labourer.’ Longman’s Magazine, 1883.Google Scholar
  17. Harvey, Geoffrey. The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy. London: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
  18. Hopkins, Harry. The Long Affray: The Poaching Wars in Britain. London: Faber and Faber, 2008.Google Scholar
  19. Humphries, Jane. ‘“The Most Free from Objection…”’ The Sexual Division of Labour and Women’s Work in Nineteenth-Century England.’ The Journal of Economic History. 47/4 (December 1987): 929–949.Google Scholar
  20. Hyde, William J. ‘Hardy’s View of Realism: A Key to the Rustic Characters’ in Victorian Studies, 2/1 (September 1958): 45–59.Google Scholar
  21. Malcolmson, R. & Mastoris, S. The English Pig: A History. London: Hambledon, 2001.Google Scholar
  22. Mallett, Phillip. Thomas Hardy in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
  23. Martell, Jessica. ‘The Dorset Dairy, the Pastoral, and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 68, No. 1 (June, 2013): 64–89.Google Scholar
  24. McKenzie, T. C. & Yudkin, J. C. Our Changing Fare. London: McGibbon & Kee, 1966.Google Scholar
  25. Millgate, Michael Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
  26. ———. (Ed.) Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
  27. ———. Thomas Hardy’s Public Voice. Edited by Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.Google Scholar
  28. Page, Norman. An Oxford Reader’s Guide to Thomas Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
  29. Parrinder, Patrick. ‘Hardy and Englishness’ in Thomas Hardy in Context, edited by Phillip Mallett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
  30. Purdy, R. L. & Millgate, M. (Ed.) The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy Volume Four. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.Google Scholar
  31. Radford, Andrew. ‘Folklore and Anthropology’ in Thomas Hardy in Context, edited by PhillipMallett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
  32. Ray, Martin. Thomas Hardy Remembered. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007.Google Scholar
  33. Reid, Fred. ‘The Dorsetshire Labourer’ in Thomas Hardy in Context, edited by Phillip Mallett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
  34. Sayer, Karen. ‘Field-Faring Women: The Resistance of Women who Worked in the Fields of Nineteenth Century England’, Women’s History Review, 2 (1993): 185–98.Google Scholar
  35. Sharpe, P. Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700–1850. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.Google Scholar
  36. ———. Women’s Work: The English Experience. USA: Bloomsbury, 1998.Google Scholar
  37. Tomalin, Claire. Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man. London: Penguin, 2007.Google Scholar
  38. Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
  39. Verdon, Nicola. Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth Century England: Gender, Work and Wages. Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 2002.Google Scholar
  40. Weber, Carl J. ‘Chronology in Hardy’s Novels.’ PMLA, 53/1 (March 1938): 314–320.Google Scholar
  41. Woolf, Virginia. ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’ [1928], The Common Reader Vol. II [1932]. London: Random House, 2003.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.St. Mary’s UniversityTwickenhamUK

Personalised recommendations