The text is fully annotated and includes a separate table of contents for the novel to assist readers in locating specific episodes or passages.
Hardy's hand-drawn map of Wessex and the manuscript title page for the first edition of his novel are also included.
Hardy and the Novel includes seven poems by Hardy that provide greater insight into his ethos; selections from Michael Millgate's biography of Hardy that depict the relationship between episodes in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and events in the author's life; and excerpts from Grindle and Gatrell's introduction to the 1983 edition that discuss Hardy's revision process in both manuscripts and early printed editions of the novel.
Criticism features three contemporary reviews of the novel not printed in the earlier Norton editions, including the first feminist review of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Also new are "A Chat with Mr. Hardy," a hitherto unprinted post-publication interview with the author about his new novel, and five carefully selected critical interpretations.
Essays by Elliot B. Gose, Jr., Peter R. Morton, and Gillian Beer address Hardy's debt to Charles Darwin, perhaps the single most important influence on Hardy's thought and imagination; Raymond Williams's essay presents a Marxist perspective; and Adrian Poole discusses the significance of Hardy's wisdom concerning "the trouble men's words have with women and the trouble women have with men's words."
A Chronology, new to this edition, and a Selected Bibliography are included.
同样新出版的还有《与哈迪先生的聊天》(A Chat with Mr. Hardy),这是一篇出版后对作者关于他的新小说的采访,迄今尚未出版,还有五篇精心挑选的批判性解读。
Elliot B. Gose, Jr., Peter R. Morton和Gillian Beer的随笔谈到了哈代欠查尔斯达尔文的恩德,也许是对哈代的思想和想象力重要的影响;雷蒙德·威廉姆斯的文章提出了马克思主义的观点;和Adrian Poole讨论了哈代的智慧的意义,关于“男人的话对女人的麻烦,女人对男人的话的麻烦。”
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), enduring author of the twentieth century, wrote the classics Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and many other works. Scott Elledge was Goldwin Smith Professor of English Emeritus at Cornell University. He was the author of E. B. White: A Biography and Wider than the Sky: Poems Selected for Young Readers. He was the editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost, Eighteenth-Century Critical Essays, and Milton's "Lycidas": An Approach to Criticism.
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