Sixteen years after finishing his last novel, Hardy prepared the Wessex Edition of his collected works, published by Macmillan in i912.. In the General Preface to this handsome edition he classified his fourteen novels under three headings. The first of these classes, “Novels of Character and Environment,” contained, as it happened, all the novels that he and his readers had judged to be his finest: Far from the Madding Crowd (i 874), The Return of the Native (i 878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). Of these Hardy chose Tess, probably the most widely read, for Volume I of the new edition. ...

This Third Edition of Tess of the d'Urbert,illes intro-duces a new text--that of the Clarendon edition(1983), edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell.The text is fully annotated and includes, for ease of refer- ence, a separate table of contents for the novel. Also new to the Third Edition are reproductions of Hardy's map of Wessex and the manuscript title page for the First Edition.

“Hardy and the Novel” includes seven poems by Hardy that provide greater insight into his ethos, passages from Michael Millgate's biogra-phy of Hardy that depict the relationship between parts of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and the author's own life, and excerpts from Grindle and Gatrelt's introduction to the 1983 edition that discuss Hardy's revision process in both manuscripts and early printed editions of the novel.

“Criticism” features three new contemporary reviews including the first feminist review of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Also new to the Third Edition is “A Chat with Mr. Hardy,” a hitherto un-reprinted post-publication interview with the author about his new novel. Five new critical interpretations have been carefully selected, including essays by Elliot B. Gose Jr., Peter R. Morton, and Gillian Beer that address Hardy's thought and imagination. Raymond Williams's essay presents a Marxist perspective, and Adrian Poole discusses the significance of Hardy's wise words concerning “the trouble men's words have with women and the trouble women have with men's words.”

A Chronology and, new to this edition, a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Preface to the Third Norton Critical Edition

 HARDY'S PREFACES

Explanatory Note to the First Edition

Preface to the Fifth and Later Editions

From the General Preface to the Wessex Edition of Hardy's Novels (1912)

The Text of Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Hardy's Manuscript Title Page for the First Edition (1891)

A Table of Contents

Map: The Wessex of the Novels

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Hardy and the Novel

 HARDY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 SELECTED POEMS BY HARDY

Hap

The Sleep-Worker

New Year's Eve

Before Life and After

The Oxen

The Darkling Thrush

Drinking Song

At Castle Boterel

The Well-Beloved

Tess's Lament

We Field-Women

Heredity

The Pedigree

 FACTUAL SOURCES

Michael Millgate·[Some Originals of, and Models for, Tess Durbeyfield]

Michael Millgate·[Facts into Fiction]

 COMPOSITION AND PUBLICATION

Richard Purdy·[Tess as a Serial]

Ian Gregor and Brian Nicholas [Hardy's Concessions]

Richard Purdy [Later Editions]

Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell·[Revision in the Novel]

Criticism

 CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL RECEPTION

From The Pall Mall Gazette (December 31, 1891)

From The Athenaeum (January 9, I892)

From The Illustrated London News (January 9, 1892)

From The Saturday Review (January 16, 1892)

From The Spectator (January 23, 1892)

From The Academy (February 6, 1892)

Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson [On Tess of the d'Urbervilles]

[An Interview with Thomas Hardy]

 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

Lionel Johnson [The Argument]

Virginia Woolf [Hardy's Moments of Vision]

Irving Howe [Tess of the d'Urbervilles--At the Center of Hardy's Achievement]

Elliott B. Gose, Jr.·Psychic Evolution: Darwinism and Initiation in Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Peter R. Morton [Neo-Darwinian Fate in Tess of the d'Urbervilles]

Gillian Beer Descent and Sexual Selection: Women in Narrative

Gillian Beer Finding a Scale for the Human: Plot and Writing in Hardy's Novels

Raymond Williams [Love and Work]

Adrian Poole·‘Men's Words' and Hardy's Women

Thomas Hardy: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography