Selected Poems: Thomas Hardy (Penguin Classics)

Description:
Although best remembered today for his novels, Thomas Hardy thought of himself as a poet forced by circumstance to write fiction for a living. This generous selection of nearly two hundred poems includes such familiar pieces as 'During Wind and Rain,' 'Channel Firing,' 'Afterwards,' 'The Darkling Thrush,' and 'The Oxen,' but it will also acquaint readers with many less-celebrated works, among them 'To Lizbie Browne,' 'After the Last Breath,' 'My Spirit Will Not Haunt the Mound,' 'The Haunter,' 'Old Furniture,' 'A Procession of Dead Days,' 'The Harbour Bridge,' 'At a Country Fair,' 'Last Love-Word,' 'Waiting Both,' and 'Proud Songsters.' With an introduction and annotations by Robert Mezey, this Penguin Classics edition will help readers to recognize Hardy as one of the greatest English poets of this century.

Table of Contents:
From 'Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)'; from 'Poems of the Past and Present (1901)'; from 'Time's Laughingsocks and Other Verses (1914)'; from 'Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries (1914)'; poems of 1912-13; from 'Moments of Vision and Miscillaneous Verses (1917)'; from 'Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922)'; from 'Human Shows, for Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)'; from 'Winter Worlds in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

Author Biography:
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840. He wrote novels and poetry, much of which is set in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex. His novels include Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles(1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). He published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, in 1898 and continued to publish collections of poems until his death on 11 January 1928.