Composite Ghosts: A 'Doubleeyed' Reading of Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved

Examining Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved, written as the author moved between prose and poetry at the turn of the century, this essay considers how Hardy perceives time on the Isle of Portland to be organised vertically within the geological strata while being doubled horizontally in the quarrying activity that displaces much of the peninsula to London. Adopting the double vision of contemporary stereoscopic photographs, including views of Portland, this essay proposes that the reader should adopt a stereoscopic model of attention in order to access Hardy's vision of a spatial 'simultaneousness' in place and the writer's practice.