Turner's strikingly original and penetrating account of Hardy's extraordinarily creative life and longevity offers a series of thirty-two chapters, each of which relates the biographical and literary background of a single work.

Paul D.L. Turner, Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, read Classics and English at Cambridge University, and was formerly a University Lecturer in English at Oxford University. He contributed Victorian Poetry, Drama, and Miscellaneous Prose 1832-1890 to the Oxford History of English Literature, and his many other publications include translations of Daphnis and Chloe, Lucian's Satirical and Thomas More's Utopia.