SOURCE: Boas, R. P. Review of Thomas Hardy from Serial to Novel. Modern Language Notes 43, no. 5 (May 1928): 356.

In the following review, Boas describes Chase's analysis of Thomas Hardy's censorship of a number of his serialized novels.

This book [Thomas Hardy from Serial to Novel] is a valuable study of the changes which Thomas Hardy made in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure to render them acceptable to the taste of the magazine readers of the eighties. In all three the serial versions were bowdlerized so that no Victorian could take offense. The changes are often meticulous, sometimes far-reaching, and always with an eye to the prudish decencies. And they are sometimes astonishingly drastic as in Tess where the magazine version omits the episode of the seduction, an episode which is “the motivating incident of the story.” Jude the Obscure naturally suffers most...