It's got a music hall poem in some ways. They the ruined maid was a feature in victoria musicall. It was actually done by elsa lanchester at she did a music hall kind of routine. But if you compare it with his depiction of tess, after angel finds her in the boarding house as a ruined as a ruined maid, as a courtesan,. Angel is completely and ann hardy himself is completely aghast at the tragedy of tess. He ain't been ruined, said she. I challenge this girl whohad left the town and been been her eyes, her hands were blue from peeling spuds and all the rest. Have we subscribe to the
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside since his twenties. He hoped that he might be ranked one day alongside Shelley and Byron, worthy of inclusion in a collection such as Palgrave's Golden Treasury which had inspired him. Hardy kept writing poems for the rest of his life, in different styles and metres, and he explored genres from nature, to war, to epic. Among his best known are what he called his Poems of 1912 to 13, responding to his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma (1840 -1912), who he credited as the one who had made it possible for him to leave his work as an architect's clerk and to write the novels that made him famous.
With
Mark Ford
Poet, and Professor of English and American Literature, University College London.
Jane Thomas
Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds
And
Tim Armstrong
Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson