This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of Thomas Hardy–the first for nearly thirty years. The edition presents the poetry in a new way by giving the texts of Hardy’s original volumes, as they first appeared, instead of the revised text he later produced for his Collected Poems. It reveals the range and variety of his output–qualities he later tended to disguise. His most famous sequence, the ‘Poems of 1912-13’ appears in a radically different form.Selections from his epic drama, The Dynasts, are given within the chronological sequence of his poetry, illustrating the power of this neglected work. Notebook and journal entries, where Hardy puts forward his understanding of poetry and the role of the poet, are also included. Uniquely generous in the number of poems it contains, this edition also provides extensive annotation, locating Hardy’s work in its cultural context and reading it in the light of the critical reception. It also includes an Introduction to the life and works of Hardy, and a Chronology.