THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

THOMAS HARDY was born in a cottage in Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, on 1 June 1840. He was educated locally and at sixteen was articled to a Dorchester architect, John Hicks. In 1862 he moved to London and found employment with another architect, Arthur Blomfield. He now began to write poetry and published an essay. By 1867 he had returned to Dorset to work as Hicks’s assistant and began his first (unpublished) novel, The Poor Man and the Lady.

On an architectural visit to St Juliot in Cornwall in 1870 he met his first wife, Emma Gifford. Before their marraige in 1874 he had published four novels and was earning his living as a writer. More novels followed and in 1878 the Hardys moved from Dorset to the London literary scene. But in 1885, after building his house at Max Gate near Dorchester, Hardy again returned to Dorset. He then produced most of his major novels: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895). During the same period he published three volumes of short stories: Wessex Tales (1888), A Group of Noble Dames (1891) and Life’s Little Ironies (1894). Amidst the controversy caused by Jude the Obscure, he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems and his epic drama in verse, The Dynasts.

After a long and bitter estrangement, Emma Hardy died at Max Gate in 1912. Paradoxically, the event triggered some of Hardy’s finest love poetry. In 1914, however, he married Florence Dugdale, a close friend for several years. In 1910 he had been awarded the Order of Merit and was recognized, even revered, as the major literary figure of the time. He died on 11 January 1928. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart at Stinsford in Dorset.

THOMAS HARDY was for some years Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Adelaide, and has also lectured in Britain and the United States. He has published on Chaucer, Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and on Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and American Cinema.

PENNY BOUMELHA was born in London and educated there and at the University of Oxford. Since 1990 she has held the Jury Chair of English Language and Literature at the University of Adelaide. She has written extensively on nineteenth-century fiction, feminist criticism and narrative theory, including Thomas Hardy and Women (1982) and Charlotte Brontë (1992). She has also edited Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley for Penguin Classics.

PATRICIA INGHAM is General Editor of all Hardy’s fiction in the Penguin Classics Edition. She is a Fellow of St Anne’s College, Reader in English and The Times Lecturer in English Language, the University of Oxford. She has written extensively on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. Her most recent publications include Dickens, Women and Language (1992) and The Language of Gender and Class: Transformation in the Victorian Novel (1996). She has also edited Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and Thomas Hardy’s The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved and The Woodlanders for Penguin Classics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Much of my initial work on the editing of this text and the preparation of the Notes and Glossary was carried out as part of a period of study leave funded by the University of Adelaide, to whom I here express my thanks.

Thanks are due also to the Dorset County Museum (especially to Lilian Swindall), to the Dorset County Library, and to University College, Dublin (for making the original manuscript of the novel available to me). Even more particularly I owe much to Susan Wood-house and the staff in the Rare Book Collection in the Barr Smith Library of the University of Adelaide for their generosity in allowing me special access to their rare Hardy texts; and even more so to Cheryl Hosking, who not only acted as a splendid go-between in my dealings with the Barr Smith during my ill health, but who has also been an excellent research assistant, adviser and pacifier throughout.

Patricia Ingham has always supplied ready encouragement, sensible advice and gracious hospitality. I must also make very special mention of Michael Millgate, who has always found time, in what must be an extremely demanding life, to answer queries at length and otherwise to assist me in the most courteous manner. I also owe debts to Philip Ayres, Philip Butterss, Geoff Harcourt, John Hatch, Caroline Jackson-Houlston, Jan Leahy, Xenia and Stuart Ponting, Sarah Slade, Dave Townsend, Philip Waldron and, especially, to Lin Vasey and Sarah Coward. Lastly, I must acknowledge Penny Boumelha’s help in getting me involved in this fascinating project in the first place.

I would like to dedicate this edition to my mother, Dora Lily Slade (née Baker).

GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE

This edition uses, with one exception, the first edition in volume form of each of Hardy’s novels and therefore offers something not generally available. Their dates range from 1871 to 1897. The purpose behind this choice is to present each novel as the creation of its own period and without revisions of later times, since these versions have an integrity and value of their own. The outline of textual history that follows is designed to expand on this statement.

All of Hardy’s fourteen novels, except Jude the Obscure (1895) which first appeared as a volume in the Wessex Novels, were published individually as he wrote them (from 1871 onwards). Apart from Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), all were published first as serials in periodicals, where they were subjected to varying degrees of editorial interference and censorship. Desperate Remedies and Under the Greenwood Tree appeared directly in volume form from Tinsley Brothers. By 1895 ten more novels had been published in volumes by six different publishers.

By 1895 Hardy was sufficiently well-established to negotiate with Osgood, McIlvaine a collected edition of all earlier novels and short story collections plus the volume edition of Jude the Obscure. The Well-Beloved (radically changed from its serialized version) was added in 1897, completing the appearance of all Hardy’s novels in volume form. Significantly this collection was called the ‘Wessex Novels’ and contained a map of ‘The Wessex of the Novels’ and authorial prefaces, as well as frontispieces by Macbeth-Raeburn of a scene from the novel sketched ‘on the spot’. The texts were heavily revised by Hardy, amongst other things, in relation to topography, to strengthen the ‘Wessex’ element so as to suggest that this half-real half-imagined location had been coherently conceived from the beginning, though of course he knew that this was not so. In practice ‘Wessex’ had an uncertain and ambiguous development in the earlier editions. To trace the growth of Wessex in the novels as they appeared it is necessary to read them in their original pre-1895 form. For the 1895–6 edition represents a substantial layer of reworking.

Similarly, in the last fully revised and collected edition of 1912 – 13, the Wessex Edition, further alterations were made to topographical detail and photographs of Dorset were included. In the more open climate of opinion then prevailing, sexual and religious references were sometimes (though not always) made bolder. In both collected editions there were also many changes of other kinds. In addition, novels and short story volumes were grouped thematically as ‘Novels of Character and Environment’, ‘Romances and Fantasies’ and ‘Novels of Ingenuity’ in a way suggesting a unifying master plan underlying all texts. A few revisions were made for the Mellstock Edition of 1919 – 20, but to only some texts.

It is various versions of the 1912 – 13 edition which are generally available today, incorporating these layers of alteration and shaped in part by the critical climate when the alterations were made. Therefore the present edition offers the texts as Hardy’s readers first encountered them, in a form of which he in general approved, the version that his early critics reacted to. It reveals Hardy as he first dawned upon the public and shows how his writing (including the creation of Wessex) developed, partly in response to differing climates of opinion in the 1870s, 1880s and early 1890s. In keeping with these general aims, the edition will reproduce all contemporary illustrations where the originals were line drawings. In addition for all texts which were illustrated, individual volumes will provide an appendix discussing the artist and the illustrations.

The exception to the use of the first volume editions is Far from the Madding Crowd, for which Hardy’s holograph manuscript will be used. That edition will demonstrate in detail just how the text is ‘the creation of its own period’: by relating the manuscript to the serial version and to the first volume edition. The heavy editorial censoring by Leslie Stephen for the serial and the subsequent revision for the volume provide an extreme example of the processes that in many cases precede and produce the first book versions. In addition, the complete serial version (1892) of The Well-Beloved will be printed alongside the volume edition, since it is arguably a different novel from the latter.

To complete the picture of how the texts developed later, editors trace in their Notes on the History of the Text the major changes in 1895 – 6 and 1912 – 13. They quote significant alterations in their explanatory notes and include the authorial prefaces of 1895 – 6 and 1912 – 13. They also indicate something of the pre-history of the texts in manuscripts where these are available. The editing of the short stories will be separately dealt with in the two volumes containing them.

CHRONOLOGY: HARDY’S LIFE AND WORKS

1840 2 June: Thomas Hardy born, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, eldest child of a builder, Thomas Hardy, and Jemima Hand, who had been married for less than six months. Younger siblings: Mary, Henry, Katharine (Kate), to whom he remained close.

1848 – 56 Schooling in Dorset.

1856 Hardy watched the hanging of Martha Browne for the murder of her husband. (Thought to be remembered in the death of Tess Durbeyfield.)

1856 – 60 Articled to Dorchester architect, John Hicks; later his assistant.

late 1850s Important friendship with Horace Moule (eight years older, middle-class and well-educated), who became his intellectual mentor and encouraged his self-education.

1862 London architect, Arthur Blomfield, employed him as a draughtsman. Self-education continued.

1867 Returned to Dorset as a jobbing architect. He worked for Hicks on church restoration.

1868 Completed his first novel The Poor Man and the Lady but it was rejected for publication (see 1878).

1869 Worked for the architect Crickmay in Weymouth, again on church restoration.

1870 After many youthful infatuations thought to be referred to in early poems, met his first wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, on a professional visit to St Juliot in north Cornwall.

1871 Desperate Remedies published in volume form by Tinsley Brothers.

1872 Under the Greenwood Tree published in volume form by Tinsley Brothers.

1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes (previously serialized in Tinsleys’ Magazine). Horace Moule committed suicide.

1874 Far from the Madding Crowd (previously serialized in the Cornhill Magazine). Hardy married Emma and set up house in London (Surbiton). They had no children, to Hardy’s regret; and she never got on with his family.

1875 The Hardys returned to Dorset (Swanage).

1876 The Hand of Ethelberta (previously serialized in the Cornhill Magazine).

1878 The Return of the Native (previously serialized in Belgravia). The Hardys moved back to London (Tooting). Serialized version of part of first unpublished novel appeared in Harper’s Weekly in New York as An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress. It was never included in his collected works.

1880 The Trumpet-Major (previously serialized in Good Words). Hardy ill for many months.

1881 A Laodicean (previously serialized in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine). The Hardys returned to Dorset.

1882 Two on a Tower (previously serialized in the Atlantic Monthly).

1885 The Hardys moved for the last time to a house, Max Gate, outside Dorchester, designed by Hardy and built by his brother.

1886 The Mayor of Casterbridge (previously serialized in the Graphic).

1887 The Woodlanders (previously serialized in Macmillan’s Magazine).

1888 Wessex Tales.

1891 A Group of Noble Dames (tales). Tess of the D’Urbervilles (previously serialized in censored form in the Graphic). It simultaneously enhanced his reputation as a novelist and caused a scandal because of its advanced views on sexual conduct.

1892 Hardy’s father, Thomas, died. Serialized version of The Well-Beloved, entitled The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, in the Illustrated London News. Growing estrangement from Emma.

1892 – 3 Our Exploits at West Poley, a long tale for boys, published in an American periodical, the Household.

1893 Met Florence Henniker, one of several society women with whom he had intense friendships. Collaborated with her on The Spectre of the Real (published 1894).

1894 Life’s Little Ironies (tales).

1895 Jude the Obscure, a savage attack on marriage which worsened relations with Emma. Serialized previously in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. It received both eulogistic and vitriolic reviews. The latter were a factor in his ceasing to write novels.

1895 – 6 First Collected Edition of novels: Wessex Novels (16 volumes), published by Osgood, McIlvaine. This included the first book edition of Jude the Obscure.

1897 The Well-Beloved (rewritten) published as a book; added to the Wessex Novels as vol. XVII. From now on he published only the poetry he had been writing since the 1860s. No more novels.

1898 Wessex Poems and Other Verses. Hardy and Emma continued to live at Max Gate but were now estranged and ‘kept separate’.

1901 Poems of the Past and the Present.

1902 Macmillan became his publishers.

1904 Part 1 of The Dynasts (epic-drama in verse on Napoleon). Hardy’s mother, Jemima, ‘the single most important influence in his life’, died.

1905 Met Florence Emily Dugdale, his future second wife, then aged 26. Soon a friend and secretary.

1906 Part 2 of The Dynasts.

1908 Part 3 of The Dynasts.

1909 Time’s Laughingstocks and Other Verses.

1910 Awarded Order of Merit, having previously refused a knighthood.

1912 – 13 Major collected edition of novels and verse, revised by Hardy: The Wessex Edition (24 volumes). 27 November: Emma died still estranged. This triggered the writing of Hardy’s finest love-lyrics about their early time in Cornwall.

1913 A Changed Man and Other Tales.

1914 10 February: married Florence Dugdale (already hurt by his poetic reaction to Emma’s death). Satires of Circumstance. The Dynasts: Prologue and Epilogue.

1915 Mary, Hardy’s sister, died. His distant young cousin, Frank, killed at Gallipoli.

1916 Selected Poems.

1917 Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses.

1919 – 20 Mellstock Edition of novels and verse (37 volumes).

1922 Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses.

1923 The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (drama).

1924 Dramatized Tess performed at Dorchester. Hardy infatuated with the local woman, Gertrude Bugler, who played Tess.

1925 Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles.

1928 Hardy died on 11 January. His heart was buried in Emma’s grave at Stinsford, his ashes in Westminster Abbey. Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres published posthumously. Hardy’s brother, Henry, died.

1928 – 30 Hardy’s autobiography published (on his instructions) under his second wife’s name.

1937 Florence Hardy (his second wife) died.

1940 Hardy’s last sibling, Kate, died.

This map is from the Wessex Novels Edition, 1895–

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The following abbreviations are used for texts frequently cited in this edition:

ms	Simon Gatrell (ed.), ‘The Return of the Native’: A Facsimile of the Manuscript with Related Materials (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986)
serial	The novel’s serialization in Belgravia in 12 monthly episodes from January to December 1878
1878	The first edition, published in 3 volumes by Smith, Elder & Co. in that year
1880	The first one-volume edition, published by Kegan Paul & Co. in that year
1895	The important revised edition published by Osgood, McIlvaine & Co. as Volume VI of the Wessex Novels in that year, with an etching by H. Macbeth-Raeburn and a map of Wessex
1912	The edition published as Volume IV of the Wessex Edition by Macmillan & Co. in that year

Biography	Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, rev. edn., 1991)
Bullen	J. B. Bullen, The Expressive Eye: Fiction and Perception in the Work of Thomas Hardy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
Career	Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist (London: The Bodley Head, 1971)
Collected Letters	R. L. Purdy and Michael Millgate (eds.), The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978 – 88)
Life	Thomas Hardy, The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate (London: Macmillan, 1984)
Literary Notebooks	L. Björk (ed.), The Literary Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1985)
Paterson	John Paterson, ‘The Making of The Return of the Native’ (Berkeley: University of California English Studies 19, 1960), pp. 1 – 168
Poems	Samuel Hynes (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 – 95)
Textual	Simon Gatrell, Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
THF	The Thomas Hardy Journal (Dorchester: Thomas Hardy Society, 1985–); published three times yearly
Udal	John Symonds Udal, Dorsetshire Folk-Lore (Exeter: Dorset Books, 3rd edn. repr., 1989)

THOMAS HARDY