Hardy women : mother, sisters, wives, muses / Paula Byrne.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Phase the first: the women who made him. Childhood. Elizabeth Downton -- Elizabeth Swetman -- Lady Susan Fox-Strangways -- Jemima Hand -- Mary Head -- Mary Hardy -- Mother Christmas -- Maria Sparks -- Julia Martin -- Martha Sharpe -- Mary Antell -- Louisa Harding -- Mary Channing -- Martha Clark -- Apprenticeship. Mary Moule -- Patty Sparks -- Martha Brown -- Kate Hardy -- Sarah Ann Guppy -- Horace -- Margaret Duncan -- Mary Waight -- London. Annabel -- The Tinted Venus -- Eliza Bright Nicholls -- The Courtesans -- Miss Hardy -- Jane Nicholls -- Mary Scott-Siddons -- She -- Weymouth. Tryphena Sparks -- The girl on the steamboat -- The ruined maid -- Cassie Pole -- Cornwall. The Gifford girls -- Tryphena -- Emma Lavinia Gifford -- The Sea Goddess -- Cytherea Graye -- The Maid on the Shore -- Mrs Dewy & Fancy Day -- The five women -- Elfride Swancourt -- The governess -- Helen Paterson -- Mrs Emma Hardy -- Phase the second: the women he made. Bathsheba Everdene -- Ethelberta Petherwin -- Eustacia Vye -- Paula Power -- Lady Constantine -- Elizabeth-Jane Henchard -- Marty South -- Tess Durbeyfield -- Phase the third: the women he loved and the women he lost. Tryphena -- The new women -- Florence Henniker -- Susanna Florence Mary Bridehead -- Agnes Grove -- Emma -- Jemima -- Florence Emily Dugdale -- Emma & Florence -- The Mad Woman in the attic? -- Woman much missed -- Mrs Florence Hardy -- Voiceless ghost -- My poor Mary -- Gertrude Bugler -- My Tess -- Kate & Florence -- Epilogue: the well-beloved.

Thomas Hardy is one of the most beloved and most-read British authors. His influence on literature and the minds of his readers is singular. But how is it that the novelist who created some of the most memorable and modern female characters in literature had such troubled relationships with real women? n this highly innovative book, acclaimed biographer Paula Byrne re-examines Hardy's life through the eyes of the women who made him - mother, sisters, girlfriends, wives, muses. The story veers from shocking scenes such as his obsession with the sight of a woman hanged, to poignant vignettes of unfulfilled passion, to fascinating details of working women's lives in the nineteenth century. Hardy Women is the story of how the magnificent fictional women he invented would not have been possible without the hardship and hardiness of the real ones who shaped his passions and his imagination. It is only through understanding and witnessing these hardy women that we can truly enter the heart of this great novelist and poet.