HARDY, Thomas.

£500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Dynasts. First editions, first impressions. Hardy planned this epic dramatizing the Napoleonic wars for decades. The result was "highly readable, impressive in its historical scope, and innovative in its visual perspectives... giving voice and form to [the author's] own shifting and often self-contradictory musings about human experience" (ODNB).With the onset of the First World War, Harley Granville-Barker adapted The Dynasts for a London stage production. As a result, the work, initially released to little acclaim and intended by Hardy as a "closet" drama to be read rather than performed, gained a broader, specifically patriotic significance that enhanced its reputation.The first part of this copy is in the second issue and the second part in the second state. They bear later dates but are otherwise unaltered from the first issue and state.

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