Moxs met emma on the seventh of march in 18 70 in saint juliet, where he'd been sent by crickmay the architects of weymouth to draw up plans for the rebuilding of the church. He was entranced by her unreserved manner out of doors, her skills as a horse woman. It was four years before they could marry, in 18 74. And and emma really encouraged him. She helped him to revise and edit his novels. I think hardy was very clear that if ema hadn't encouraged him at that point, we would have lost one of the greatest writers in the english language. Thank you very much.
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