Resisting Tragedy in D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy

“What a miserable world. What colossal idiocy, this war. Out of sheer rage I’ve begun my book about Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I’m afraid – queer stuff – but not bad” (L ii 212). To write the book in question, which would first be published as “Six Novels of Thomas Hardy and the Real Tragedy” (STH xxxvi), Lawrence re-read Thomas Hardy’s complete works between July and August 1914, and is believed to have started writing what is now known as Chapter III of Study o...