HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01036 3/27/01 "HARDY'S LITERARY FRIENDS QUESTION" ========================================================================= From: Donnalpha@aol.com Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 21:35:16 EST Subject: Hardy's Literary Friends I was curious to know if Hardy had any close friends who were esteemed writers/authors like himself? What was his opinion of the fashionable authors of his day? Did he enjoy reading Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Dickens, etc. ? What did THEY think of him?? Was TH approachable for the average person or did he insulate himself - much like the modern celebrity of today?? Thanks for any insights and/or info you have on this question. Donna J ========== Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 22:27:31 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy's Literary Friends Donna, Some useful titles would be: *The Literary Notebooks of Thomas Hardy*, edited by Lennart Bjork, (2 Vols) Goteborg, Sweden 1974 *Thomas Hardy, A Biography,* Michael Millgate (OUP, 1982) *Hardy*, Martin Seymour Smith (Bloomsbury, 1994) *Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life*, James Gibson (Macmillan, 1996) The Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy*, edited by Norman Page (OUP, 2000) and of course, Florence Emily Hardy's *The Life of Thomas Hardy* (Macmillan, 1962) Good Luck! RM ========== From: "Mark" Subject: Re: Hardy's Literary Friends Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:48:36 -0600 I was curious to know if Hardy had any close friends who were esteemed writers/authors like himself? What was his opinion of the fashionable authors of his day? Did he enjoy reading Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Dickens, etc. ? What did THEY think of him?? Was TH approachable for the average person or did he insulate himself - much like the modern celebrity of today?? Thanks for any insights and/or info you have on this question. Donna J. Any decent library will have copies of the multi-volume "Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy" -- if you look through them, you will find several letters to "interesting" people. Good Luck! ==========