These essays are arranged progressively to indicate Hardy's development as a writer and thinker, and to present the major aspects of his work as a whole, linking the poetry and the prose at all appropriate stages. They suggest that 'his formative thought, the product of a period of conflict between new scientific philosophy and humanism on the one hand, and traditional Christian theology combined with Victorian restraints on the other, developed when England was not as intellectually provincial as Matthew Arnold had affirmed. Above all, they illustrate the extent to which the creative imagination and the style of Hardy the writer were stimulated and strengthened by literary influences...'. Important references are made throughout to his Life and Collected Letters.