Rediscovering Thomas Hardy’s ‘Facts’ Notebook

Abstract

From his early twenties, until his death, Thomas Hardy was an habitual — even obsessive — note-taker. As far as we can tell, he began in 1863 with the ‘Schools of Painting Notebook’. He kept notebooks, some of pocket-size, from early on in his career, only to destroy most of them or leave instructions that the remainder should be destroyed. Of those which did survive all have been edited, with the exception of ‘Poetical Matter’ (surviving only on microfilm), and the subject of this essay, described by Hardy as ‘Facts: from Newspapers, Histories, Biographies, & other chronicles (mainly Local)’.¹ The history of the composition and make-up of this notebook is, as we shall see, full of puzzles, but in essence we can say that it belongs broadly to the period 1882–1913, but with a special concentration in its compilation in the year 1884. ‘Facts’, as I shall refer to it, is a substantial and stoutly-bound manuscript volume suggesting in its physical characteristics a deliberate and sustained enterprise, but one whose nature changed during the course of compilation.