Hardy's Life and Caree

31:3 Book Reviews ethnographer enhancing the value of Arabia Deserta as an ethnographic study. This essay also makes some astute observations about Doughty's special language , a language which draws the reader into Arab culture. FinaUy there are two bibliographies: Philip M. O'Brien's "Charles M. Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta and Its Abridgments: A Descriptive Bibliography" and Tabachnick's "A Selected Bibliography of Works about Travels in Arabia Deserta." In the former, some thirty editions are described, and we discover that the book so often neglected and too little read has actually been out of print only between 1907 and 1921 (except for the abridgment of 1908). The latter affords a fair demonstration of the paucity of scholarly publication on this distinguished book. Bibliographies and articles alike can aid a scholar who wishes to consider further the strange and compelling magnificence of this late-Victorian travel book. This volume in its synthesis of science and aesthetics is both instructive and stimulating. Annette M. McCormick Baton Rouge, Louisiana HARDY'S LIFE AND CAREER Harold Orel. The Unknown Thomas Hardy: Lesser-Known Aspects of Hardy's Life and Career. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. $32.50 Every Hardy scholar has probably at some point made profitable use of Thomas Hardy's Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, Reminiscences, a collection edited by Harold Orel that brings together many texts not readily available in libraries. Orel's new book will not occupy a similarly important place in Hardy bibliographies, however. Though the dustjacket claims that Orel's approach is "innovative" and that he is providing "genuinely new information " about Hardy's life, these promises are simply not fulfilled. Unlike the two major biographies by Robert Gittings and Michael Millgate—both of which Orel glancingly dismisses—this study examines no heretofore unpublished material . The notes refer largely to standard published sources such as Florence Emily Hardy's Life (actually written by Hardy himself); the Literary Notes edited by Lennart A. Bjork; the Personal Notebooks edited by Richard Taylor; and the Collected Letters edited by Richard L. Purdy and Michael Millgate. The only originality in Orel's approach lies in the new emphasis and organization he gives to material that has long been familiar. In spite of his selfcontradicting title, The Unknown Thomas Hardy: Lesser-Known Aspects of Hardy's Life and Career, Orel reveals little that is either "unknown" or "lesser-known" to the reader of the basic seminal works by and about Hardy. What is revealed in the book, in fact, is the Thomas Hardy that is "known" (or desired) by Harold Orel himself—hence its eccentric assortment of chapters 372 31:3 Book Reviews documenting disparate aspects of Hardy's life: some of his Uterary friendships ; his interest in architecture, the theatre, the law, and archaeology; his attitude toward his long epic-drama, The Dynasts. The topics themselves, especially Hardy's relationship with the theatre, do wanant more extensive study than they have yet received, but Orel's claims to originality—combined with his repeated faüure to acknowledge any but his quoted sources—seriously call into question the book's assumptions and methodology. The chapter on Hardy's lifelong architectural interests is a case in point. Orel claims that his argument is a response to the views of "[s]ome critics" who "misunderstand the continuity of a Ufe when they discuss Hardy's art as if it began in his fourth decade and was unaffected by memories of the profession he had renounced" (19). He never mentions who these critics are, however, nor does he allude to the fact that Millgate, for example, does examine just such a continuity and mentions most of the same facts in his biography (which includes a detailed chapter on Max Gate). The same failure to cite offending critics or relevant sources afflicts much of the book: anonymous "critics" or "biographers " or "journalists" are set up as straw men and women whom Orel then knocks down by using, while failing to document, information from already published sources. In the two chapters on Hardy's Uterary friendships, Purdy and MUlgate are explicitly set up as the straw men. Here Orel attacks what...