Thomas Hardy's Short Stories New Perspectives

Thomas Hardy penned nearly fifty short stories, but in spite of this impressive number, his contributions to the genre have been relatively understudied. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this is the first edited collection devoted solely to Hardy's works of short fiction. The contributors take up topics related to their publication in periodicals, gender and community relationships, and narrative techniques. Taken together, the essays show that Hardy's short stories are important, not only for what they tell us about Hardy as a writer who straddles the divide between the traditionalist and the modernist, but also for how they reflect and inform the period in which he wrote.

CONTENTS List of FiguresIntroductionAcknowledgementsPart One: Periodical Publication1 Neither Tales nor Short Stories: Issues of Authorship, Readership, and Publishing in A Group of Noble Dames Graham Law2 "Moonlight Nights": Hardy, Christmas, and the Illustrated London News Siobhan Craft BrownsonPart Two: Gender Relationships3"Getting life-leased at all cost": Marriage in Hardy’s Late Short Stories Suzanne Flynn 4 Pregnant by a Portrait: The Dynamics of Desire for Hardy’s "Imaginative Woman" Deborah Manion5"Imaginative Sentiment": Love, Letters, and Literacy in Thomas Hardy’s Shorter Fiction Karin KoehlerPart Three: Community Relationships6 Hardy and Humor: The Mores of WessexJuliette Berning Schaefer7 Love, Deception, and Disguise in A Few Crusted Characters JoAnna Stephens Mink Part Four: Narrative Technique8 "To Correct the Misrelation": Reading Hardy’s Wessex Tales Neelanjana Basu9 Representations of the Body in Hardy’s Life’s Little IroniesCarolina Paganine 10 Hardy’s Mercurial Narrator: "Breaking the Frame" in "A Changed Man" Keith Callis Notes on ContributorsIndex

Juliette Berning Schaefer is Associate Professor of English at Ohio Dominican University, USA, and Siobhan Craft Brownson is Associate Professor of English at Winthrop University, USA.