Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Thomas Hardy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0140433414 | ISBN-13: 978-0140433418 | Publication Date: October 28, 1993

Although best remembered today for his novels, Thomas Hardy thought of himself as a poet forced by circumstance to write fiction for a living. This generous selection of nearly two hundred poems includes such familiar pieces as "During Wind and Rain," "Channel Firing," "Afterwards," "The Darkling Thrush," and "The Oxen," but it will also acquaint readers with many less-celebrated works, among them "To Lizbie Browne," "After the Last Breath," "My Spirit Will Not Haunt the Mound," "The Haunter," "Old Furniture," "A Procession of Dead Days," "The Harbour Bridge," "At a Country Fair," "Last Love-Word," "Waiting Both," and "Proud Songsters." With an introduction and annotations by Robert Mezey, this Penguin Classics edition will help readers to recognize Hardy as one of the greatest English poets of this century.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems Tim Armstrong brings together over 180 poems in the first comprehensively annotated selection of Hardy’s poetry. Unlike most previous selections, this edition preserves the shape of the poet’s career by presenting the poems in the order in which they appeared in the Collected Poems of 1930, rather than re-ordering them thematically.

Head notes to each poem give the reader information about its composition, publication, sources and metrical scheme; on-the-page notes list significant variants in Hardy’s manuscripts, point out literary and other allusions, and give explanatory glosses. An appendix contains a selection of relevant passages from Hardy’s notebooks, letters, and autobiography; and a bibliography suggests further reading.

Tim Armstrong’s critical Introduction discusses Hardy’s career, his poetics, his use of memory and allusion and examines his position in the context of Victorian debates on aesthetics and belief. The generous selection of poems includes many lesser-known poems as well as those which have received most critical commentary, and the important elegiac sequence ‘Poems of 1912-13’ is included in its entirety.

Tim Armstrong is Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, and author of Haunted Hardy: Poetry, History, Memory (2000).

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840. He wrote novels and poetry, much of which is set in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex. His novels include Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles(1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). He published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, in 1898 and continued to publish collections of poems until his death on 11 January 1928.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (October 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140433414
• ISBN-13: 978-0140433418
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,699,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Selected Poetry Available, December 19, 2009

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J. Cohen - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Penguin Classics "Selected Poems" of Thomas Hardy is undoubtedly the best available book of Hardy's verse. Of course, there is the gargantuan Collected Poems that's available from Palgrave Press if you're a completist. But if you're not interested in owning every poem that Hardy ever wrote AND if you want a book that's actually portable, this is the one you want to get.

Now, for some odd reason, despite Penguin's "Selected Poems" being the best, short collection of Hardy's verse available, I've never seen the book in a book store. Instead, there's always some inferior publication on their shelves--like the Hardy selection available from the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, for instance.

But don't let that fool you. This Penguin selection is vastly superior to those few alternatives. All you have to do is to compare the Tables of Contents to see for yourself, and I think you will agree that Penguin's editor, Harry Thomas, has done a great job of whittling Hardy's substantial verse output down to the essentials.

Also, it's important to note that Penguin has actually published TWO different versions of their "Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems": one was edited by Harry Thomas and the other was edited by Robert Mezey. This can be a bit confusing, because although both versions are very good and have a similar cover style, their respective selections are significantly different (for instance, Thomas' edition has the poem "A Broken Appointment" and Mezey's does not). So be sure to keep this in mind before making your purchase.