Desperate Remedies

by Hardy, Thomas; Ingham, Patricia

• ISBN13: 9780192840707
• ISBN10: 0192840703
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Hardy's first published work, Desperate Remedies moves the sensation novel into new territory. The anti-hero, Aeneas Manston, as physically alluring as he is evil, even fascinates the innocent Cytherea, though she is in love with another man. When he cannot seduce her, Manston resorts todeception, blackmail, bigamy, murder, and rape. Yet this compelling story also raises the great questions underlying Hardy's major novels, which relate to the injustice of the class system, the treatment of women, probability and causality. This edition shows for the first time that the sensationnovel was always Hardy's natural genre. It is based on the first edition text, and includes later prefaces and the Wessex Poems "dissolved" into prose.

Author Biography

Patricia Ingham has edited texts by Hardy (including Jude the Obscure for OWC), Dickens, Gaskell and Gissing, as well as writing widely on the Victorian novel. She is the General Editor of the Authors in Context series in OWC, and author of the volume on Thomas Hardy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. viii
Introduction	p. ix
Note on the Text	p. xxvii
Select Bibliography	p. xxxiii
A Chronology of Thomas Hardy	p. xxxvi
Desperate Remedies
Hardy's Poems 'dissolved into' Desperate Remedies	p. 383
Later Prefaces to the Novel	p. 388
Explanatory Notes	p. 389
Glossary	p. 416
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