Walter de la Mare 1873–1956
- Walter de la Mare 1873–1956
NOTES
1. “Of these four absorbing studies, that of consciousness, perhaps, has been the means of suggesting what is the most unusual quality of The Dynasts.…The reader’s consciousness is Mr. Hardy’s stage. He translates…the macrocosm without—that world of a Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples—into terms of the quiet brooding world within.” (Review of The Dynasts, 1910.) Or again, of Hardy’s lyrics, “Every line of them—best and worst—is sealed with his own hand. We share an intense solitude of the spirit. We are as close to actual experience as words can bring us.” (Review of Collected Poems, 1919.)
2. “I had by then…failed as a writer. No fewer than three books had by then appeared, two of verse, and one, an extravagant romance Henry Brocken. And by 1908 their financial ‘takings’ for the author amounted to a deficit occasioned by his purchasing the copyright of two of them for £20. I had also contributed two or three reviews to The Bookman.” (Preface to Private View, 1953, xii.)
