The Poor Man and the Lady
Encyclopedia
The Poor Man and the Lady was the first novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

. It was written in 1867 and never published. After the manuscript had been rejected by at least five publishers, Hardy gave up his attempts to sell the novel in its original form; however, he incorporated some of its scenes and themes into later works, notably in the poem "The Poor Man and the Lady" and in the novella An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (1878).

The manuscript no longer exists; Hardy destroyed the last surviving fragment during his last years, after abandoning the idea of reconstructing the rest of the novel from memory.

Sources

Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy (Norman Page
Norman Page
Norman Page was a British actor. He is best known for his portrayal of David Lloyd George, Prime Minister during the First World War, in the 1918 film The Life Story of David Lloyd George which is believed to be the first ever feature length political biopic.-Selected filmography:* The Life Story...

, Editor). Oxford: Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

, 2000.
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