Without Emma Gifford, we might never have heard of Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s first wife was instrumental in his decision to abandon architecture for a writing career, and a direct influence – possibly collaborator – on his early novels. Their marriage, initially passionate, defied family expectations and class barriers, but by the time of Emma’s death, it had deteriorated into hostility and bitterness. Out of grief, regret and ambivalence, Hardy produced the work Mark Ford considers to be among ‘the greatest poems in any language’: Poems of 1912-13.

Mark and Seamus discuss the collection in the light of what Hardy called ‘strange necromancy’: the reconfiguring of Emma as ghost, critic, corpse and mythic lover. They pay close attention to the tight structure and novelistic detail in these poems, which exemplify Hardy’s gift for mixing the lyrical with realism.

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Read the poems:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2863/2863-h/2863-h.htm

Further reading and listening from the LRB:

On Mark’s book, Woman Much Missed:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n19/matthew-bevis/i-prefer-my-mare⁠

Hugh Haughton on Hardy’s ghosts and Emma’s diary:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n21/hugh-haughton/ghosts⁠

Dinah Birch on the letters of the two Mrs Hardies:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n22/dinah-birch/defence-of-the-housefly⁠

Mark and Seamus on Hardy for Modern-ish Poets:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/modern-ish-poets-thomas-hardy⁠

Mark and Mary Wellesley discuss A Pair of Blue Eyes:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/thomas-hardy-s-medieval-mind⁠