HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0085 10/16/00 "HARDY MYSTERY AND DETECTION" ======================================================== Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 11:31:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Meg Cronin Subject: Hardy and mystery and detection Hello, I am writing a paper propsal right now (even as we speak), and a question occurred to me. What did Hardy know/read--if anything--of detective fiction? Did he know Poe's Dupin? Did he consider any traditions/conventions of mystery in his thinking about his own writing? Meg Cronin Meoghan Cronin St. Anselm College mgcronin@anselm.edu ========== Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 13:08:00 -0300 From: Richard Nemesvari Organization: St. Francis Xavier University Subject: Re: Hardy and mystery and detection Hardy was certainly familiar with sensation fiction of the 1860s, and those novels almost always involve mystery and detection. In particular he knew the work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and indeed specifically said that *Desperate Remedies* was "of the Miss Braddon school." Thus it is very likely that he had read *Lady Audley's Secret,* which presents Robert Audley in the role of detective, and of course practically everyone had read Wilkie Collins' *The Woman in White* and *The Moonstone,* which are likewise centred around detective work. It strikes me that many of the conventions in these kinds of texts occur in Hardy's novels (an idea I've recently advanced in a book proposal of my own). Richard Nemesvari Department of English St. Francis Xavier University ==========