Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy - Hardcover

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9780198600749: Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198600747 ISBN 13: 9780198600749

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Under the editorial direction of Norman Page, more than 40 of the world's most prominent experts have been brought together to combine their insights and knowledge of all aspects of Thomas Hardy's life and work.
In more than 300 alphabetically arranged entries, this superb reference work examines all the novels, collections of verse, autobiography, letters, essays, stories, and notebooks produced during Hardy's long career. It examines his family and friends, the places that were important to him, and the influences that shaped his works, and it looks at more scholarly topics, such as various critical approaches to his work, and the history of Hardy publishing. Fully cross-referenced, and with a chronology of Hardy's life, an index of his poems, lists of place-names and characters in his works, a glossary of dialect words and expressions, a subject index, and an extensive bibliography, this is a gold mine of information.
Boasting sound scholarship, the convenient companion format, and many beautiful black-and-white illustrations, The Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy is an indispensable volume for all lovers of modern English literature.

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About the Author:

Norman Page, Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham.

From Booklist:

Reviewed with The Oxford Reader's Companion to Conrad.

In 1999, Oxford introduced a new branch of its esteemed family of Oxford Companions with the publication of Oxford Reader's Com panion to Dickens [RBB O 1 99] and Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope (1999). Reflecting the general format of the previous volumes, these two new compilations cover not only the authors' lives and works but also the social, cultural, and political milieu in which they lived. Thus, the alphabetically arranged entries range from lengthy treatments of each author's publications, to family members, friends, and associates, to places, ideas, and events that had a significant influence on their lives or that figured prominently in their writings. In addition, both volumes include articles that offer valuable overviews of the major critical and biographical studies available on each writer. A significant difference is that only the volume on Conrad also includes entries for major characters.The more than 400 entries in the Conrad companion were authored by Knowles and Moore (both noted Conrad scholars) and four additional contributors, while the 320 entries in the Hardy companion are the work of Page, who is a prominent and prolific authority on English literature, and an international team of 42 scholars. Both volumes include black-and-white illustrations, author chronologies, and useful indexes that arrange entry headings under broad subject categories. The Conrad companion also contains an index of references to his works, a family tree, and a section of maps; and the Hardy companion features five appendixes, ranging from an index to his poems to a list of media adaptations, the latter of which is disappointing in its incompleteness. Both volumes could have benefited from a more generous use of see references; for instance, neither companion refers users from Evolution to Darwinism or from World War I to First World War.Oxford Reader's Companion to Conrad is the first truly encyclopedic work devoted to Conrad. It complements Leonard Orr and Ted Billy's recent A Joseph Conrad Companion (Greenwood, 1999), which is a collection of 14 essays that survey the biographical and critical scholarship on Conrad, and it provides both broader and more in-depth coverage of Conrad's life and works than does Norman Page's A Conrad Companion (St. Martin's, 1986). Because Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy does not include separate entries for Hardy's characters, earlier guides to Hardy, such as F. B. Pinion's A Hardy Companion (Macmillan, 1976) and Glenda Leeming's Who's Who in Thomas Hardy (Taplinger, 1975), continue to be useful resources for Hardy scholars.Reflecting the high scholarly standards and readability that one has come to expect of an Oxford Companion, these volumes are highly recommended for all academic libraries and for larger public libraries. REVWR
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