HARDY, Thomas.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Trumpet-Major. First edition in book form of the author's great novel set in the Napoleonic war, written to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Trafalgar, and incorporating comic elements to move away from its darker predecessor The Return of the Native (1878).Hardy compiled in the work the three separate strands which at that time most affected his life. One strand was his own Dorset background, and in particular the idea of a family reminiscence; another is the strand of historical study, and in particular the concentration he was then giving to the years 1804-5 and the effect of the then recent French Revolution. "These two strands... are firmly woven into the construction of the novel, and give it remarkable unity and a steady sense of reality. Hardy was determined that the charges of unreality, brought against 'The Return of the Native', should not be repeated" (Gittings, p. 397). The third strand, natural in that Hardy was then writing with an idea of how his books might appear onstage, is that the characters are "universal figures from the traditional rituals of the theatre". "It was an inspired time to begin dramatic work. Ellen Terry had joined [Henry] Irving as his leading lady in 1878... Hardy's concentration in 1879 on theatrical matters held a great importance for the novel he was writing... The pattern of the book, embracing nearly every major character, derives from the old Italian Comedy of Masks, whose debased form, the harlequinade, was showing in nearly

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.