Description: Woman Much Missed is the first book-length study of the many poems that Thomas Hardy composed in the wake of the death of his first wife Emma. It shows how Emma's writings and experiences were fundamental to Hardy's evolution into both a best-selling novelist and into one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century
Review Quotes: "Ford's close reading of Hardy's poetry and his analysis of many of his influences and sources is impressive. There's a wealth of fascinating material in this book." -- Harriet, Shiny New Books
"[O]utstanding: admirably concise but rich in the meticulous close reading at which Ford excels...Mark Ford sets it all out - the necromantic poet, his much-missed wife, and her "shy, pliant, star-struck" but no less ghost-ridden understudy - without ever passing judgement, except on the poetry. Compassionate, intelligent and supremely tactful, this is the deeply humane book all three deserve." -- TLS"The clarity and vigor of Ford's prose, supplemented with a judicious and selective amount of criticism, ensure that the book will be accessible to a broad readership. Ford's volume makes a major contribution to the study of Hardy's poetry...Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- Choice"Ford's work is humane in its recognition that a history of love, estrangement, remorse, and too-long postponed efforts at reconciliation, hurt Hardy into poetry. It is intelligent (and, indeed, equally humane) in its alertness to writing's exploratory impulse and transforming process." -- Ralph Pite, The Review of English Studies "Paying homage to Hardy, Robert Frost seized on a vital quality: 'He has planted himself on the wrongs that can't be righted.' Emma's death is one such wrong, and in Woman Much Missed Mark Ford weaves together the life and poetry without reducing one to the other and offers a fine-grained analysis of their relationship and its bearing on Hardy's work. Moving from his depictions of Emma's life before they met to their courtship and marriage, to her death and its aftermath, Ford's is the first book-length study of what he calls 'the entire corpus of Emma poems'." -- Matthew Bevis, London Review of Books