Synopses & Reviews
Thomas Hardy's "Studies, Specimens &c." notebook, dating from the mid-1860s, preserves unique evidence of the studies of other writers and the self-assigned exercises in vocabulary-building and poetic techniques by which he so deliberately sought to make himself into a poet at the very beginning of his literary career. This edition presents the manuscript in quasi-facsimile, with full annotation of Hardy's sources, allusions, and intentions, as far as they can be interpreted.
Review
"A carefully prepared edition of a rare Hardy notebook....Of great value to Hardy scholars."--Nineteenth-Century Literature
"A suberb scholarly edition of this very important record of Hardy's early literary efforts has been prepared by Pamela Dalziel and Michael Millgate....An invaluable guide through this thicket of Hardy's uses of quotation and personal amplification by identifying the source of each discoverable quotation-even the actual copy of the book Hardy used-and carefully discriminating Hardy's quotations from his own comments and experimental variations....This fine exemplar of meticulous editing makes it an appropriate memorial to a scholar whose work exhibited that combination of wide-ranging scholarship and scrupulous care for detail they have lavished on it."--English Literature in Transition