In 1898, a novelist long considered England's greatest living writer did something unexpected: he published his first book of poetry, then declared he'd write no more novels. The savage reception of Jude the Obscure had broken something in him. What emerged instead was this collection: 51 poems rooted in the Dorset countryside of his youth, where dialect words still carry the weight of centuries, and where the landscape itself seems to grieve alongside its inhabitants. Here you'll find sprightly ballads sung in village taverns, verses tracing the footsteps of Napoleonic soldiers across the chalk downs, and private elegies for the women Hardy loved and lost. These are not polished estate poems but something rawer - the work of a man who discovered that verse could hold what prose could not. The Wessex that readers knew from his novels appears here not as backdrop but as confession, rendered in Hardy's own hand with illustrations that capture the stark beauty of a county he called home long after he'd left it.
