"My dear Tom": Hardy and Moule

Abstract Using a variety of research tools, principally Hardy's dated bible markings, and the consistency of particular scenes, character types, and themes in Hardy's fiction, the essay argues that Hardy in young manhood was far from the naive innocent portrayed in biographies. Well before his marriage he had accumulated a variety of emotional and sexual experience, and this prepared him to write authoritatively about the "fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity" (Preface to Jude the Obscure)