Description
Book SynopsisThomas Hardy is one of England’s greatest novelists and poets, whose part-real, part-imaginary realm of Wessex has taken on a life of its own. But his first career in architecture has been seen as perverse or contradictory. The assumption has been: he changed career because he wasn't much of an architect.
This book is the first to study Hardy from an architectural perspective, and it offers startling insights into a man who never stopped thinking, writing and working as an architect. It reveals a biting commentator on the architectural debates of his day; the most influential conservation writer there has ever been; and his experiments in architectural representation – which would still be radical a century later. Linking writing, maps, images, polemic and buildings, Wessex appears as a remarkable, entirely architectural project that shapes the way we see, imagine and build England to this day.
Trade Review"This is a marvellous book, recommended to anyone interested in architecture or conservation, and it will make readers eager to take another, more informed, look at Hardy’s novels." – Peter Parker, A Magazine for RIBA Friends of Architecture
"This is a thought-provoking and elegantly written book of value to all students of architecture, conservation and nineteenth – and early twentieth-century visual culture." – Jeremy Musson,
The Victorian"A must read for anyone with an interest in Hardy."
– Tony Fincham,
The Thomas Hardy Journal"Handsomely designed and generously illustrated, it also has the merit of being a visual pleasure to read, a bonus not always to be found in these days of increasingly meagre book-production values." – Keith Wilson,
English Literature in Transition: 1880-1920Table of ContentsPart 1: VISION. 1: Not Much of an Architect; 2: A Kind of Education; 3: Ways of Seeing: the Early Novels; 4: Doubt and Experiment: 'Oddities and Failures'; 5: Unsafe Pictures: The Return of the Native; 6: Different Constructions: Built and Imagined Part 2: REALISATION. 7: The Invention of Wessex; 8: The Character of the Streets: The Mayor of Casterbridge; 9: A Little Influence: The Wessex Campaign; 10: Building Up: Max Gate Phase 1; 11: How That Book Rustles: The Woodlanders; 12: Wessex Copyright: Names and Maps; 13: Stepping Out: Authored and Anonymous Part 3: RECONSTRUCTION. 14: Time and Place; 15: Troublesome Land: Tess of the D'Urbervilles; 16: Obstructed Visions: Jude the Obscure; 17: Horizons Open: Poems and Photographs; 18: Building On: Max Gate Extended; 19: An Imaginary Story: The Conservation of Wessex; 20: A Partial Completion: Plays, Poetry, Performances
