Thomas Hardy to Grant Allen

 

 

English poet and regional author Thomas Hardy ruled English literary scene for close to five decades. Hardy wrote from his individual awareness and experiences. His characters were drawn from individuals, existent and remembered, and his sceneries were at spots familiar to him. He may perhaps, and did, shift structures and spots from their particular geographic location to go well with the needs of his plot. This style of his was later copied by several writers on both the sides of Atlantic, but none came even remotely closer to what he achieved. In the following letter to great science writer and friend Grant Allen, Hardy talks about general happenings in his life.

Max Gate, Dorchester, January 7, 1896

My dear Allen:

Many thanks for your letter. I am quite remorseful at remembering that I did not even acknowledge the receipt of the Barbarians. But I read the welcome present as soon as it arrived. I was so interested in the mysterious man as a personage that I forgot he was an allegory, & I can say with absolute honesty that I was vexed and disappointed when he vanished! I have just seen the Blackwood attack. The only thing in it I mind in the least is the charge of mercenariness in letting my story run through Harpers. As a matter of fact I asked them to cancel the contract when I found the difficulties of its issue there.

Talk of shamelessness: that a woman who purely for money’s sake has for the last 30 years flooded the magazines & starved out scores of better workers, should try to write down rival novelists whose books sell better than her own, caps all the shamelessness of Arabella, to my mind.

However, I have almost forgotten there is such a pursuit as literature in the arduous study of—bicycling!—which my wife is making me learn to keep her company, she doing it rather well.

Sincerely yrs

Thomas Hardy