Merely a Good Hand at a Serial? from A Pair of Blue Eyes to Far from the Madding Crowd

Abstract

It was in a letter to Leslie Stephen during the serialisation of Far from the Madding Crowd in the Cornhill Magazine that Hardy famously, and perhaps somewhat disingenuously, claimed that he had no higher wish ‘for the present’ than to be considered ‘a good hand at a serial’.¹ There is of course some truth in this claim. He was part-way through the writing of only his second serialised novel; and having recently abandoned architecture, he desperately needed to make a success of his new career as a writer in order to generate a steady income, particularly in view of his forthcoming marriage. He therefore had to produce a serial acceptable to both editors and readers, so that more commissions would come his way. But whatever Hardy’s conscious aims were (and they may well have been higher than he cared to admit to his editor), Far from the Madding Crowd is infinitely more than simply a good serial. It is universally regarded as Hardy’s first major achievement, and one of the half-dozen novels on which rests his stature as a major novelist. In contrast, by general critical consent, A Pair of Blue Eyes is seen as interesting and enjoyable but slight, an apprentice piece.