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Commentary

In 1892, the photographer "Wheeler of Weymouth," whose studio was not far from Hardy's home of Max Gate in Dorchester, depicted the fifty-two-year-old novelist as a conventionally dressed, somewhat staid middle-class gentleman of middle-age for the London Illustrated News serialisation of The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament. Here, just several years later, Thomas Hardy is a Victorian sage of advanced age, the last of the great nineteenth-century British novelists since the death in 1889 of Wilkie Collins. In Macbeth-Raeburn's philosophical study, Hardy no longer looks directly at the viewer, but gazes thoughtfully down and to the left, contemplating the past as he tugs at his greying moustache. This is the genius that will preside over the succeeding volumes of the Osgood, McIlvaine Complete Uniform Edition of the Wessex Novels.

Literary Relations

• The Novels of Thomas Hardy
• Why do Hardy's novels often have illustrations in periodical but not book form?
• Mrs Agatha Thornycraft — A Visual Inspiration for Hardy's Tess
• Thomas Hardy's Pictorial Imagination and The Mayor of Casterbridge
• Hardy, Dickens, Serialisation, and Illustration
• A new book on Hardy and book illustration by Philip Allingham
• Book Illustration in the Victorian Period: Great Britain and America

A Thomas Hardy Gallery

• Mr. Thomas Hardy, The Novelist by Wheeler of Weymouth, 1892
• Portrait by Reginald Eves, R. A., 1923
• Places Important in His Life and Writings (70 photographs)

Bibliography

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman. Illustrated by Henry Macbeth-Raeburn. Volume One in the Complete Uniform Edition of the Wessex Novels. London: Osgood, McIlvaine, 1895.

Gatrell, Simon. Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.

Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2004.

Pinion, F. B. A Hardy Companion. Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Macmillan, 1968.

Purdy, Richard L. Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study. Oxford: Clarendon, 1954, rpt. 1978.

Ray, Martin. Thomas Hardy: A Textual Study of the Short Stories. London: Ashgate, 1988.

Seymour-Smith, Martin. Hardy. London: Bloomsbury, 1994.

Turner, Paul. The Life of Thomas Hardy. A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

Wright, Sarah Bird. Thomas Hardy A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2002.

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Last modified 14 January 2017