Thomas Hardy | Far from The Madding Crowd, 1908, Virginia Woolf's copy

Thomas Hardy

Far from The Madding Crowd. London: Macmillan, 1908.

VIRGINIA WOOLF'S COPY, WITH HER OWNERSHIP INSCRIPTION on front free endpaper ("V. Stephen"), 1908 reprint, 8vo, 32pp. publisher's catalogue at end original blue cloth, upper cover blocked in gold with TH monogram medallion, housed in collector's slipcase in blue morocco and cloth, front and rear free endpapers browned, hinges split, lower joint starting, binding worn and soiled, spine sunned

“…For these reasons, Hardy’s genius was uncertain in development, uneven in accomplishment, but, when the moment came, magnificent in achievement. The moment came, completely and fully, in Far from the Madding Crowd. The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which, however fashions may chop and change, must hold its place among the great English novels…” (Virginia Woolf, ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’)

VIRGINIA WOOLF'S COPY OF A FAVOURITE NOVEL WITH A DEEP FAMILY RESONANCE.

Virginia Woolf travelled to Max Gate on 25 July 1926 for her first and only meeting with Thomas Hardy, and Far From The Madding Crowd was a natural place for the two writers to begin their conversation on literature. Woolf admired the novel greatly but it was also a book that connected the two writers in a much more personal way. It had been Leslie Stephen, Woolf’s father, who had accepted the novel for publication when he was editor of The Cornhill Magazine. At that point Stephen was an established man of letters whilst Hardy was largely unknown, and not only did Woolf’s father play a vital role in the publication of Hardy’s breakthrough novel but he also introduced him to many figures in literary London. Hardy dedicated a poem in remembrance of Stephen in Satires of Circumstance (1914), which triggered his daughter to write to Hardy to tell him how “I have long wished to tell you how profoundly grateful I am to you for your poems and novels”.

Virginia Woolf’s tea with Hardy was a memorable success and is recorded in typically exquisite detail in her diary. She records Hardy's comment about her father's publication of Far From the Madding Crowd: "We stood shoulder to shoulder against the British public about certain matters dealt with in that novel". She was impressed by his "freedom, ease & vitality": "He seemed very 'Great Victorian' doing the whole thing with a sweep of his hand (they are ordinary smallish, curled up hands) & setting no great stock by literature; but immensely interested in facts; incidents; & somehow, one could imagine, naturally swept off into imagining & creating without a thought of its being difficult or remarkable; becoming obsessed; & living in imagination".

Virginia Woolf’s diaries and letters include many references to her love of Hardy’s work: when she visited Stonehenge in 1903 she was reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and when she was trying to encourage herself in her writing she looked to Hardy as an example (“...As for Thomas Hardy, he's a great man; his style is not made to fit, but what of that? If we had but his ribs, his thighs, his stomach and his entrails!...”, 21 May 1912). His novels are singled out for praise in The Common Reader, but her detailed critical appreciation of Hardy came with the essay ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’. She was commissioned in 1919 to prepare an obituary piece for the TLS, and the subject occupied her for a considerable period: in 1921 she was still “reading Hardy for my famous article – the one I'm always talking about", and she felt some discomfort that she was writing in preparation for his death. The essay, a sensitive and sympathetic survey of his work, appeared in the TLS just eight days after he died in January 1928, and was republished in The Common Reader Vol. 2 (1932).

BOOKS FROM VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LIBRARY ARE RARE AT AUCTION. Virginia Woolf evidently acquired this volume while she was still "V[irginia] Stephen": i.e. before her marriage to Leonard Woolf in 1912. The lot includes a typed letter of provenance signed by Leonard’s final companion, Marjorie Tulip ("Trekkie") Parsons, recording in August 1994 that this volume "was in the library of Virginia Woolf and remained in her possession until her death'', that it passed at that time to Leonard Woolf, and then, she says, "at Leonard's death it passed to me and has remained in my possession until now".

PROVENANCE:

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): inscription to front free endpaper ("V. Stephen"); Leonard Woolf (1880-1969); Marjorie Tulip ("Trekkie") Parsons (1902-1995): typed letter signed ("M.T. Parsons") and dated August 1994, confirming earlier provenance; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 2004, lot 258

LITERATURE:

Marion Dell, ‘Moments of Vision: Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf’, The Thomas Hardy Journal, 31 (2015), 13-24