Thomas+Hardy's+Wessex+Poems+(1898)


 * Thomas Hardy’s //Wessex Poems// (1898)**

Thomas Hardy rose to prominence first as a novelist. Publishers rejected his early poems, and this influenced him to pursue novel writing. By the 1890s, the financial success of his novels allowed him to write poetry full time. (James Gibson, //Dictionary of Literary Biography//). He published his first volume of poetry, //Wessex Poems//, in December 1898 (Michael Millgate, //Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//). Before this volume, he had published only two poems: “The Bride-Night Fire” in the //Gentleman’s Magazine// in 1875, and “Lines” in the //Pall Mall Gazette// in 1890 (Samuel Hynes, //Complete Works// p.93; p.104). Hardy proposed that he cover the costs of publication, but Harper & Brothers refused. Hardy’s proposal to his publisher reveals his uncertainty over his success as a poet, even at the age of fifty-eight. His first volume is a collection of 51 poems from the 1860s up to the 1890s: seventeen date from the 1860s, three from the 1870s, one from the 1880s, and the rest are likely from the 1890s (Gibson, //Literary Biography//). Hardy did not publish his poems in chronological order, and some of them are undated. Fortunately, scholar Dennis Taylor has created an ordered list of his poetry (pp.35-57). Although we can find many other 19th century poems in Hardy’s 20th century volumes – of which there are seven – //Wessex Poems// is the most Victorian in terms of date of composition.

Hardy’s style in this first volume varies widely, and he even includes 32 of his own illustrations to accompany the poems (Millgate, //National Biography//). The title of the volume uses Hardy’s fame as the Wessex novelist to promote sales (Gibson, //Literary Biography//). Genres range from ballad, narrative, Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet to lyric. Hardy writes four of the sonnets in the voice of a woman, and he sets several narratives during the Napoleonic era (Claire Tomalin p.280). Topics include love, loss, crisis of faith, time, change, death, isolation, and aging. “I Look into My Glass” deals with aging and isolation, “Friends Beyond” explores the transience of life, and “Neutral Tones” mourns a loss of love (Gibson, //Thomas Hardy// pp.140-1). Influenced by Darwin’s //Origin of Species// from 1859, Hardy questions Christian promises of heaven in “A Sign-Seeker” and “The Impercipient” (F.B. Pinion p.262). The speaker in “Nature’s Questioning” cannot determine whether life derives from a “Vast Imbecility,” an “Automaton,” or a “high Plan.” He concludes that “Earth’s old glooms and pains / Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh” (Hardy, //Complete Works// ll. 86-7).

//Wessex Poems// received mixed reviews, and George Meredith’s exclamation captures the public’s confusion over Hardy’s switch to poetry: “what induces Hardy to commit himself to verse!” (Millgate p.364). His novels were far more popular than his poetry at this time: one hundred thousand editions of //Tess of the d’Urbervilles// sold annually, while only 500 copies of //Wessex Poem//s sold over five years (Gibson, //Literary Biography//). A few of Hardy’s friends, including Leslie Stephen, Edmund Gosse, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, offered praise (Pinion p.262; Millgate p.365). Hardy replied to Gosse that “the poems were just lying about, and I did not quite know what to do with them” (Gibson, //Thomas Hardy// p.141). In response to critical confusion over his switch to verse, he mentioned to Gosse that “to indulge in rhymes was my original weakness, and the prose only an afterthought” (Gibson, //Thomas Hardy// p.141). Hardy lamented that contemporary poetry had become “the art of saying nothing with mellifluous preciosity,” and he acknowledged that his inclination to privilege content over form challenged this trend (Pinion p.262). Critic Lionel Johnson referred to Hardy’s poems as “arresting, strenuous, [and] sometimes admirable” (Millgate p.364). The //Saturday Review// dismissed //Wessex Poems// as “this curious and wearisome volume, these many slovenly, slipshod, uncouth verses, stilted in sentiment, poorly conceived and worse wrought.” The reviewer adds that “it is impossible to understand why the bulk of this volume was published at all – why [Hardy] did not himself burn the verse, lest it should fall into the hands of the indiscreet literary executor, and mar his fame when he was dead” (Millgate p.364).

Hardy’s wife Emma also gave a cold reception to the volume. Hardy’s official biography maintains that in his poetry Hardy adhered to his friend Stephen’s opinion that “the ultimate aim of the poet should be to touch our hearts by showing his own” (Gibson, //Thomas Hardy// p.139). Furthermore, Hardy explains in the Preface to //Wessex Poems// that the poems are “in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception” (Gibson, //Thomas Hardy// p.138). Because Hardy weaves his own experience into these poems, his allusions to women other than Emma are obvious. He implies in “Thoughts of Phena” that he preferred his cousin Tryphena Sparks over Emma, and he mourns the loss of Sparks’ love in “Her Immortality” and “In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury” (Pinion p.263). Emma considered “The Ivy-Wife” to be a personal attack against her (Tomalin p.280), and she felt that “Ditty,” the only poem addressed to her, hardly made up for the allusions to other women in Hardy’s past and present that include Sparks, Eliza Nicholls, and Florence Henniker (Millgate p.365).

TS/Engl386/UVic/Fall2012

Gibson, James. //Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life//. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Print Gibson, James. “Thomas Hardy.” //Dictionary of Literary Biography//. 1983. Web. 18 October 2012. Hardy, Thomas. //The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy//. Ed. Samuel Hynes. Oxford: University Press, 1982. Print. Millgate, Michael. “Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928).” //Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//. 2006. Web. 18 October 2012. Millgate, Michael. //Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited//. Oxford: University Press, 2004. Print. Pinion, F. B. //Thomas Hardy: His Life and Friends//. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Print. Taylor, Dennis. “The Chronology of Hardy’s Poetry.” //Victorian Poetry// 37.1 (Spring 1999): 1- 58. Web. 18 October 2012. Tomalin, Claire. //Thomas Hardy.// New York: Penguin Press, 2007. Print.
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