The Website

Hardy’s Correspondents, a collaborative project between the University of Exeter and Dorset Museum, aims to make available for the first time over 5000 letters which are cared for at Dorset History Centre. These letters form part of Dorset Museum’s Thomas Hardy Memorial Collection, the largest Hardy collection in the world, recently selected for the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme.

This website, Phase One of the Hardy’s Correspondents project, brings to the public images and fully annotated transcriptions of 100 letters to Hardy. These 100 letters, from friends, family, fans, readers and publishers, on subjects ranging from writing, wife sales, Wessex, and the welfare of animals, were transcribed and encoded in conjunction with the Hardy and Heritage collaborative PhD project between the University of Exeter and Dorset County Museum.

For the few letters by Thomas Hardy that are included in Phase One, full transcripts can be found in The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Eds. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978-1988. Print and Web. For links within the people records, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is referenced for further information on UK subjects. We are also pleased to reference Wikipedia as a democratic, open access source which bridges scholarly and more informal learning, providing access to checkable citations and sources.

How to Cite

Suggested citation for the resource as a whole, using MLA guidelines:

Angelique Richardson and Helen Angear, editors. Hardy’s Correspondents, Phase One, University of Exeter, hardycorrespondents.exeter.ac.uk

Suggested citation for an individual letter, using MLA guidelines:

Angelique Richardson and Helen Angear, editors. “Horace Moule to Thomas Hardy, 2nd July 1863.” Hardy’s Correspondents, Phase One, University of Exeter, hardycorrespondents.exeter.ac.uk