Output details

New edition of Hardy’s The Return of the Native, with introduction and appendices including contemporary reviews, related writings, and contextual materials, as well as illustrations from the original serialization in Belgravia magazine and Hardy's performance text of the mummers' play.

This edition was prepared using the 1912 Wessex edition held in the British Library. Avery added substantial annotations and footnotes, explaining allusions, archaic and dialect phrases, and biographical and contextual references. Seven appendices provide a range of contextual materials, reproducing items which are often unavailable outside major copyright libraries. These include a set of contemporary reviews of the novel, drawn from newspapers and journals of the 1870s and 80s; extracts from political, philosophical and scientific texts of the period; a selection of other writings by Hardy – both poetry and prose – which are drawn from first editions in all cases; the reprinting of illustrations for the monthly serialization in Belgravia magazine in 1878; and Hardy’s own performance text of the mummers’ play, The Play of Saint George, originally published in 1928 and included here for the first time in the context of the novel. Each extract in the appendices is introduced and also annotated. The 7,200-word Introduction offers a reading of the novel which emphasises its engagement with a wide range of political concerns and its status as a precursor of Jude the Obscure.