Thomas Hardy's Poetry

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside since his twenties. He hoped that he might be ranked one day alongside Shelley and Byron, worthy of inclusion in a collection such as Palgrave's Golden Treasury which had inspired him. Hardy kept writing poems for the rest of his life, in different styles and metres, and he explored genres from nature, to war, to epic. Among his best known are what he called his Poems of 1912 to 13, responding to his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma (1840 -1912), who he credited as the one who had made it possible for him to leave his work as an architect's clerk and to write the novels that made him famous.

With

Mark Ford Poet, and Professor of English and American Literature, University College London.

Jane Thomas Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds

And

Tim Armstrong Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:48.8	programs hello in the 1890s Thomas Hardy stopped writing novels and returned to his first love
0:54.6	poetry and he stayed writing poems for 38 years the rest of his life.
0:59.9	In different styles and meters he explored genres from nature, the darkling thrush, to war drummer
1:05.5	Hodgy and to epics, the Dinas.
1:08.2	And among his best known are what he called his poems 1912 to 13, responding to his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma,
1:15.8	who was neither his first love nor his last, but was the muse who'd made his writing possible.
1:21.2	With me to discuss Thomas Hardy's poetry are Tim Armstrong,
1:24.4	Professor of Modern Literature at Royal Holloway University of London. Jane Thomas,
1:29.1	Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and Mark Ford, Poet and Professor of English and American Literature, University College London.
1:40.0	Mark Ford, what do we need to know about how this early life that's relevant to his poetry?
	...

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