Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles is the penultimate collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy, and was published in 1925. A miscellaneous collection, Human Shows included old, new, and updated poems.
Themes and tone
The most cheerful of Hardy's collections, Human Shows has been seen as reflecting something of an Indian summer on its author's part: he himself, in his introduction to Winter Words, feared that he had been “too liberal in selecting flippant, not to say farcical, pieces into the collection”. A pastoral tone prevails, often dramatising characters from Hardy's fiction, and at times Hardy even seems to burlesque some of his own tragic themes - of ironic accidents and patterned fate – as in the sketch "Snow in the Suburbs".
The collection includes more serious poems as well – memories of friends and family gone, as well as of his first wife Emma. "Alike and Unalike" records the beginning dissension in his marriage with his attachment to Florence Henniker; and "Nobody Comes" records his lonely wait for his second wife Florence Dugdale to return after an operation in London.
See also
References
- I. Ousby ed, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1995) p. 460
- J. C/ Brown, A Journey into Thomas Hardy's Poetry (London 1989) p. 241
- D. Wright ed., Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Penguin 1978) p. 450
- J. C. Brown, A Journey into Thomas Hardy's Poetry (London 1989) p. 211-2
- I. Ousby ed, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1995) p. 460
- M. Seymour-Smith, Thomas Hardy (London 1994) p. 460=1
- J. C. Brown, A Journey into Thomas Hardy's Poetry (London 1989) p. 118
External links
 | This article about a collection of written poetry is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |