One of Hardy's unusual claims to distinction as a poet is that his first book of verse was not published until he was fifty-eight and had already achieved fame as a novelist. In the next thirty years, from 1898 through to his death in 1928, he was to write nearly one thousand poems, a remarkable example of a substantial creative performance at an advanced age. For Hardy himself it was a particularly satisfying achievement because he had always valued poetry above prose fiction. Readers of The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 learn that from an early age he had wanted to be a poet, and that he had turned to novel writing only because he had failed to get his early poetry published. Hardy's official biography was published in two volumes, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928, in 1928 and 1930, and...