Desperate Remedies

Desperate Remedies
Desperate Remedies  
Desperate Remedies 1871.jpg
First edition title page
Author(s) Thomas Hardy
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Tinsley Brothers
Publication date 1871
Media type Print (Hardcover)
ISBN NA

Desperate Remedies is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published anonymously by Tinsley Brothers in 1871.

Contents

Plot summary

This brilliant but neglected novel - the first that Hardy ever published - not only rivals the detective fiction of Wilkie Collins but bears the undoubted imprint of the mature Hardy. It treats the darker aspects of human passion as well as the innocence of young love, especially from the woman's point of view. It is a tale of 'mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moral obliquity', in which Cytherea Graye, beloved by a young architect, Edward Springrove, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry. Miss Adclyffe's machinations, the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston, Miss Adclyffe's illegitimate son, a passionate villain, whose first wife is believed to have perished in a fire. The consequences of this union and the amazing denouement make for one of Hardy's most readable and compelling novels.

Publishing History

After Hardy had trouble publishing his first novel, he was told to "attempt a novel with a purely artistic purpose, giving it a more 'complicated' plot than was attempted with his first, unpublished novel." The publication of Desperate Remedies was Hardy's breakthrough, and the first of a long string of novels that propelled him to the forefront of Victorian letters.[1]

Criticism

Some critics cite "quasi-gothic" elements in Desperate Remedies. It was fairly reviewed in the Athenaeum and Morning Post. However, the review in the Spectator butchered Hardy and his work, calling the book "a desperate remedy for an emaciated purse" and that the unknown author had "prostituted his powers to the purposes of idle prying into the way of wickedness."[2] Hardy wrote of the review, "alas...the Spectator brought down its heaviest leaded pastoral staff on the prematurely happy volumes...the bitterness of that moment was never forgotten, at that moment I wished I was dead."[3]

References

  1. ^ C.J.P. Beatty's introduction to the 1975 publication of Desperate Remedies
  2. ^ Tomalin, Claire. "Thomas Hardy." New York: Penguin, 2007.
  3. ^ F.E. Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy 1840-1928 (1962) pg.84

External links


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