Emma confided to florence that she thought thomas was resembling crippin, who h'd been on trial for the murder of his wife. Emma became increasingly ill after the heart failure that eventually killed and hardy doesn't seem to have noticed this because they led these separate lives. Hardy apparently told her to straighten her collar before making his way in his own time, up to emma's attic where he found her indeed dying. And she died in his arms of heart failure. The shock was so great to hardy that it resulted in this magnificent outpouring of loss and grief, regret and guiltnd even on her wreath,. He he wrote for her, lonely husband
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