Return of the Native

Thomas Hardy, whose writing immortalized the Wessex countryside and dramatized his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life, was born at Upper Bockhampton, near Stinsford in Dorset in 1840, the eldest child of a prosperous stonemason. As a youth he trained as an architect and in 1862 obtained a post in London. During his time he began seriously to write poetry, which remained his first literary love and his last. In 1867-68, his first novel was refused publication, but Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), his first Wessex novel, did well enough to convince him to continue writing. In 1874, Far from the Maddening Crowd, published serially and anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine, became a great success. Hardy married Emma Gifford in 1878, and in 1885 they settled at Max Gate in Dorchester, where he lived the rest of his life. There he had wrote The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

With Tess, Hardy clashed with the expectations of his audience; a storm of abuse broke over the “infidelity” and “obscenity” of this great novel he had subtitled “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.” Jude the Obscure aroused even greater indignation and was denounced as pornography. Hardy’s disgust at the reaction to Jude led him to announce in 1869 that he would never write fiction ever again. He published Wessex Poems in 1898, Poems of the Past and Present in 1901, and from 1903 to 1908, The Dynast, a huge drama in which Hardy’s conception of the Immanent Will, implicit in the tragic novels, is most clearly stated.

In 1912 Hardy’s wife, Emma died. The marriage was childless and had been a troubled one, but in the years after her death, Hardy memorialized her in several poems. At seventy-four he married his longtime secretary, Florence Dugdale, herself a writer of children’s books and articles, with whom he live happily until his death in 1928. His heart was buried in the Wessex Countryside; his ashes were placed next to Charles Dickens’s in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

A SATURDAY afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.

The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking dread.

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn: then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half-way.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.

The Return of the Native was a radical departure for Thomas Hardy, ushering in his tragic literary vision of the world. Though set in a small space (Egdon Heath in the fictional county of Wessex) and short time (the main action spans a year and a day), the novel addresses the broad social and intellectual upheavals of the Victorian age. Much of this turmoil is embodied in the character of Eustacia Vye, the novel’s wilful female protagonist. A complex, independent young woman, Eustacia is a sympathetic but ultimately tragic figure, the epitome of what the narrator calls the “irrepressible New.”
The appendices to this Broadview edition place the novel in the context of Hardy’s career and the scientific and social ideas of the time. Documents include contemporary reviews, related writings by Hardy, and materials on biology, geology, and the “Woman Question.” Illustrations from the original serialization in Belgravia magazine and Hardy’s performance text of the mummers’ play are also included.

“Simon Avery’s edition of The Return of the Native, Hardy’s first great classic, provides a beautifully balanced, meticulously researched resource. Avery’s editorial approach is, in every respect, new and fresh—even in his interpretation of the novel’s denouement. Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, the compelling Introduction features a rich collection of viewpoints and critiques in a manner so informative, compact, and stylish that exploration becomes the modus operandi within and beyond the plot. In turn, the appendices at the end of the book complement the contextualising of the Introduction and footnotes. A selection of Hardy’s other writings in prose and poetry adds textual weight and structural balance overall.” — Rosemarie Morgan, University of St. Andrews
“Simon Avery has edited Hardy’s The Return of the Native with great skill: his footnotes are detailed and extensive without becoming intrusive; his bibliography of further reading selects judiciously from old and new materials; and he gives a generous range of contemporary materials to help contextualise the book. Alongside the unmistakable nineteenth-century concerns present in Hardy’s novel, Avery alerts us to less well-known ones, illuminating in particular Hardy’s depiction of Eustacia Vye, who can be seen from this edition as a precursor to Sue Bridehead, the proto-feminist of Jude the Obscure. Distinctively too, Avery includes a selection of Hardy’s poetry, helpfully breaking down the barrier between Hardy the novelist and Hardy the poet. In all respects, the volume continues the excellent standard of Broadview Hardy editions.” — Ralph Pite, Bristol University

Descriere de la o altă ediție sau format:
The Return of the Native was a radical departure for Thomas Hardy, ushering in his tragic literary vision of the world. Though set in a small space (Egdon Heath in the fictional county of Wessex) and short time (the main action spans a year and a day), the novel addresses the broad social and intellectual upheavals of the Victorian age. Much of this turmoil is embodied in the character of Eustacia Vye, the novel’s wilful female protagonist. A complex, independent young woman, Eustacia is a sympathetic but ultimately tragic figure, the epitome of what the narrator calls the “irrepressible New.”
The appendices to this Broadview edition place the novel in the context of Hardy’s career and the scientific and social ideas of the time. Documents include contemporary reviews, related writings by Hardy, and materials on biology, geology, and the “Woman Question.” Illustrations from the original serialization in Belgravia magazine and Hardy’s performance text of the mummers’ play are also included.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Thomas Hardy: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
The Return of the Native
Appendix A: Prefaces and Maps

1. The Preface to the 1895 Wessex Novels Edition
2. The Postscript added to the 1912 Wessex Edition
3. From the General Preface to the Novels and Poems (1912)
4. Map of Egdon Heath (1878)
5. Map of Wessex (1895)

Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews

1. From The Athenaeum (23 November 1878)
2. Hardy’s response to the Athenaeum review (30 November 1878)
3. From W.E. Henley, The Academy (30 November 1878)
4. From the Saturday Review (4 January 1879)
5. From the Spectator (8 February 1879)
6. From the New Quarterly Magazine (October 1879)
7. From Havelock Ellis, “Thomas Hardy’s Novels,” Westminster Review (April 1883)

Appendix C: Philosophical and Political Contexts

1. Positivism: from Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity (1851−54; trans. 1875−76)
2. The Individual and Freedom: from John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
3. The Woman Question: from John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (1865) and John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869)
4. Hedonism and Modernity: from Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)

Appendix D: Scientific Influences

1. From Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830−33)
2. From Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)
3. From Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology (1864−67)
4. From Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)

Appendix E: Other Writings by Hardy

1. A Selection of Hardy’s Poetry
   1. Hap
   2. At a Bridal
   3. Neutral Tones
   4. Nature’s Questioning
   5. An August Midnight
   6. The Dead Man Walking
   7. By the Barrows
   8. The Roman Road
   9. The Moth-Signal
   10. The Oxen
   11. Welcome Home
   12. The Graveyard of Dead Creeds
   13. Domicilium
2. From “The Dorsetshire Labourer” (1883)
3. From “The Profitable Reading of Fiction” (1888)
4. From “Candour in English Fiction” (1890)
5. From The Life of Thomas Hardy (1928; 1930)

Appendix F: The Play of Saint George
Appendix G: Arthur Hopkins’s Illustrations for the Monthly Serialization of Belgravia (1878)
Select Bibliography