Thomas Hardy

Starred review from December 4, 2006
Respected British biographer Tomalin (whose Samuel Pepys
was 2002's Whitbread Book of the Year) sticks to the substantiated facts of Hardy's life (1840–1928) in her finely honed biography, dismissing the speculative claims of other Hardy scholars as she charts the great British novelist and poet's rise from humble rural origins to bestselling author and literary eminence. Tomalin captures the awkwardness of Hardy's conduct in high society following his literary success, brilliantly highlighting the snobbishly mocking diary entries of upper-class observers. At the heart of Tomalin's narrative is a gripping account of Hardy's long, troubled marriage to Emma Gifford in which Tomalin carefully shows how a heady courtship waned into disappointment and bitterness on both sides. Tomalin damns neither party, evoking Emma's eccentricities and frustrations along with Hardy's infatuations with other women. She also treats, with great sensitivity and insight, Hardy's poetic outpourings after Emma's death, in which he imaginatively returned to an image of her as his beloved muse. "The wounds inflicted by life never quite healed over in Hardy," writes Tomalin, although she avows she cannot completely fathom the underlying cause of his acute sensitivity to humiliation. A feat of distillation and mature judgment, Tomalin's biography artfully presents Hardy in his intimate and social world, offering succinct and insightful readings of his work along the way. Illus., map.

November 15, 2006
Praising Thomas Hardy's poetry, fellow poet Ezra Pound called it the harvest of having written 20 novels first. Given the prominence of Hardy's novels, it is easy to forget that he is also one of the finest modern English poets. In Tomalin's ("Jane Austen: A Life") new biography of Hardy, she gives full treatment to the novels but is especially interested in how Hardy's poetry reflects the events of his life and how small incidents and emotions recollected over time come back to inform the moments of his poetry. She is especially impressed with the uncompromising nature of his "Poems 191213," the writing of which was stimulated by the sudden death of his first wife. Tomalin's treatment throughout is well informed but popular in focus; she has no political or theoretical ax to grind. Her book joins the recent, more exhaustive, and scholarly Hardy biographies by Paul Turner, Michael Millgate, and Martin Seymour-Smith. Tomalin's fluently written work is highly recommended, especially for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/06; a new selection of Hardy's love poems, selected by Tomalin, is are also published by Penguin.Ed.]T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2006
Longtime friends who regarded Thomas Hardy as a "sphinx-like" riddle would marvel at how fully a twenty-first-century biographer illuminates the Victorian writer's tangled life. In a struggling young London architect, Tomalin discerns the nascent impulses that finally coalesced in powerful novels and exceptional poetry. Readers see how that art challenged a self-confident age's orthodoxies, as Hardy distilled his rage against social injustice into imagery of rare resonance. Tomalin acknowledges that Hardy's rage occasionally carried him into bottomless despair (manifest particularly in " Jude the Obscure"). Yet even as she criticizes an authorial fury that weakens several narratives, Tomalin highly praises the creative poise with which Hardy transmutes turbulent emotions into mature poetry. Through the adamantine discipline of verse, an aging man converts grief at his wife's death into poignant elegies, memorializes the painful loss of childhood faith, and plumbs the cruel mystery of time. A balanced assessment highlights the brilliance of "The Darkling Thrush," but also exposes the wooden awkwardness of " The Dynasts."" "Yet even a literary mastery that culminates in magical epiphanies cannot shield Hardy from the posthumous travesty of his farcical double funerals, here recounted in depressing detail. A priceless resource for the general reader and the Victorian scholar.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)