"Peter Widdowson's new selection of Thomas Hardy's poems and non-fictional prose is a radical and innovative attempt to recast 'Hardy the poet' and to make important essays by him more accessible to a wider readership." "Containing just under 200 of Hardy's shorter poems, the volume divides them into two sections: 'The Familiar Hardy' and 'The Less Familiar Hardy'. The latter are sectionalized to bring out Hardy's concerns with social and philosophical issues, with war and, pre-eminently, with women and sexuality." "In addition, the volume includes Hardy's own prefaces to his volumes of poems, his essays on fiction, on the 'Dorsetshire labourer' and on a macabre eighteenth-century execution outside Dorchester. Both prose and poems have full explanatory notes; there is also a succcinct and lively introduction to Hardy's life and work and a provocative essay on the fashioning of the 'familiar Hardy' by critics and editors."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved