HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H9857 7/31/98 "CATEGORIZING HARDY'S NOVELS" ====================================================== From: "Dr. Adrienne Gavin" Subject: Character and Environment Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 16:56:13 -0400 (EDT) In response to a query from one of my students who is writing a dissertation on Hardy I have been searching in the library to no avail in order to find where it is that Hardy divides his novels into three categories: novels of ingenuity, romances and fantasies, and novels of character and environment. Can anyone help in telling me where Hardy wrote about this distinction or where his thoughts--on novels of character and environment in particular--might be found/ reprinted/discussed by critics etc. Anything will be of help. Thank you in advance Adrienne Gavin Dr Adrienne E. Gavin Department of English Canterbury Christ Church College North Holmes Road Canterbury Kent CT1 1QU U.K. ph. (01227) 767700 ext 2265 fax (01227) 470442 a.e.gavin@canterbury.ac.uk ========== Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:15:51 -0300 From: Richard Nemesvari Organization: St. Francis Xavier University Subject: Re: Character and Environment Hardy divides his novels into the three categories mentioned below in the 1912 "General Preface to the Novels and Poems," usually simply referred to as the Preface to the Wessex Edition. As Michael Millgate notes in his biography, this "divided the prose volumes into categories which would have the effect of separating the major from the lesser works and at the same time, as [Hardy] told Macmillan, give reviewers something to write about" (475). I'm sometimes not sure how useful the divisions are, since I tend to perceive more continuities in Hardy's fiction than disjunctions, but hey it worked: it's given me something to write about! Have a look at the Preface for Hardy's "explanation" of the categories. Richard Nemesvari Department of English St. Francis Xavier University rnemesva@stfx.ca ==========