[English History Collection] – [Hardy, Thomas] Fowles, John/ Draper, Jo.

Thomas Hardy’s England.

London, Jonothan Cape, 1984. 22cm x 23cm. 192 pages. With extensive photograph illustrations. Original Hardcover with original illustrated (price-clipped) dustjacket. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear to the jacket. Name of preowner on endpaper.

Includes for example the following chapters: Hardy’s England/ Village Life/ Travel Through Hardy’s England/ The Town/ Farming the Land etc.

Few novelists have portrayed their surroundings so faithfully as did Thomas Hardy; none has made so detailed a record of the struggles and strivings of rural society as it changed into the modern world. Small wonder that he was also attracted by the documentary world of photography, particularly as practiced by the photographer Hermann Lea. Hardy spoke more openly about his work to Lea than to any other man. Together, on foot, by bicycle, and later by motor car, they toured Hardy’s Wessex, Lea listening to the master’s tales and then capturing the scenes that today so eloquently reflect the England brought to life in ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and many others of Hardy’s works. John Fowles, who like Hardy is a resident and lover of Dorset, was enthralled by the photographs and their unique documentary quality. He has collaborated with the historian Jo Draper to produce a fascinating interpretation of an England only a century past, and yet which now seems a milennium gone, irretrievably lost.

• Keywords: English History Collection · Library & Collection Building
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0224029746
• Inventory Number: 41951AB