Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life (Literary Lives) - Hardcover

'Gibson is the magister ludi of Hardy studies...Gibson brings to Hardy's life the weight of his own history, expertise and variegated Hardy knowledge. The book is continually alive with interest, matured judgement and sheer delight in a novelist and poet whom Gibson dearly loves.' - Dennis Taylor, The Thomas Hardy Journal

'What makes the reading of Gibson's book even more arresting is the author's sure grasp of the artist's multi-layered universe. He is the authoritative guide confidently leading the reader along the many literary and biographical pathways that converge and separate along the vast panorama of a life fully lived.' - Francesco Marroni, Rivista di Studi Vittoriani

'...this, of all the biographries, is the one to recommend to students, this being our Literary Life.' - Professor Michael Irwin, Oxford Reader's Companion to Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy in the Literary Lives series relates Hardy's life to his career as a writer, giving particular attention to his determination as a young man to make literature his career, his methodical preparation during the first thirty years of his life for that career, the writing of his fourteen published novels and the fame they brought him, and then, the culmination of his life as writer, his emergence in his remaining thirty years as one of the very greatest of English poets and the writer of The Dynasts.