Hardy Facsimiles

30:2, Reviews vivid as one might expect; Graham's summary of a Spanish novel (which could be read by the unwary as a factual account of the Mexican government's tyranny); a brief story of an old couple's Christmas eve; Graham's preface to his Brought Forward; a tribute to Lone Wolf (one of Cody's troupe who died and was buried in England); and the Mexican portion from "Tschiffely's Ride," hardly satisfactory in its fragmentary form. A rich selection this is not. And yet Graham here as elsewhere turns out to be eminently readable. It is easy to read the volume straight through from cover to cover—easier than to say just why one feels that Graham is always a rewarding if never a great writer or why one's interest in the text seems never separable from one's interest in Don Roberto the man. Wendell V. Harris _______________________________________Penn State University____________ HARDY FACSIMILES The Thomas Hardy Archive: 1. Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Facsimile of the Manuscript with Related Materials, 2 vols, and The Thomas Hardy Archive: 2. TAe Return of the Native: A Facsimile of the Manuscript with Related Materials. Edited with Introductions by Simon Gatrell. New York and London: Garland, 1986. $150 and $100 In 1911 Hardy responded favorably to the suggestion by Sydney Cockerell, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, that his manuscripts should be presented to various libraries in Britain and America. The result was a general dispersion that made for much more difficult arrangements in studying Hardy's manuscripts than, say, Dickens's. In the 1960s, as the study of original manuscripts became a growth industry in the academy and Hardy's manuscripts were beginning to show the effect of many hands turning over pages and of scholars leaning on opened bound manuscripts, many of them were microfilmed to reduce the call upon them by occasional students and curiosity seekers. Somewhat later (my copies are dated 1975) EP Microform Limited microfilmed Hardy manuscript material on a programmatic basis and more extensively than had been done in the first attempt, including revising copy and partial drafts and proofs. Most of the microfilm copies of the 1960s I have seen present a delightfully large image on the microfilm-reader's screen; but the cameras appear not to have been as well-focused as those used by EP Microform's photographers, whose products, however, cast rather noticeably smaller images. As a result, the student of a manuscript frequently has needed to consult both microfilms in order to decipher difficult passages. (Of course not all passages are decipherable even on the originals.) I have also had a set of 8 1/2" χ 11" prints made from a microfilm copy of the manuscript of TAe Mayor of Casterbridge by the photographic services division 224 30:2, Reviews of my university's library. Although the microfilm images are small—the microfilm being one of those sold by EP Microform—the photographic service with considerable care enlarged them. The resulting large image provides a method of manuscript study which is generally to be preferred over a microfilm-reader although the images are slightly less clear even than those in the microfilms made in the 1960s. The capability of tuming over leaves quickly in search of comparative orthography or passages one is curious about, and of putting in stacks leaves relevant for separate problems, greatly increases speed and accuracy in studying textual problems, an activity that when limited to microfilms of manuscripts is at best aggravating and at worst eye-defeating. With TAe Thomas Hardy Archive volumes, one has a resource nearly as convenient and legible as the manuscripts themselves. They are of course bound, so the separation of manuscript leaves can be managed only if you are willing to remove the covers and guillotine the binding. Because these books' plates reproduce in only one color (black), and because the camera was prepared to catch most sharply the black ink Hardy used, they do not show well the various pencilled markings Hardy made (some evidently while reading galleys); and neither ink nor pencil passages which have been erased would be readily discernible (let alone decipherable...