SOURCE: Hawkins, Desmond. “‘By Truth Made Free’: A Reassessment of Thomas Hardy.” Contemporary Review 232 (1978): 209-12.

In the following review, Hawkins comments on a biography of Hardy and new editions of his prose drama and collected letters.

Fifty years ago Thomas Hardy died—a fact of which ignorance is barely excusable in view of the flood of books, articles and programmes on television and radio that commemorate the occasion. So firmly is he now established among the great masters of our literature that even his extreme sensitivity to criticism would surely be disarmed by the general acclaim. Nor has his reputation had to pass through that trough of neglect and indifference which sometimes marks the first decades after death and before a later discovery. In the years since 1928 he has been extensively read and closely studied. To speak of him as a figure of worldwide significance is no exaggeration...