Thomas Hardy and Victorian Communication: Letters, Telegrams and Postal Systems [Hardcover]

Acknowledgments.- List of Abbreviations.- Introduction: A Modern Wessex of the penny post.- 1. The speaking age is passing away, to make room for the writing age: From Oral Tradition to Written Culture.- 2. Inconvenient old letters: Letters and Privacy in Hardys Fiction.- 3. A more material existence than her own: Epistolary Selves in Hardys Fiction.- 4. Never so nice in your real presence as you are in your letters: Letters and Desire in Jude the Obscure. 5.A Story of to-day: Hardys Postal Plots.- 6. Unopened and forgotten: Letters from the Margins.- 7. Epistolary Ghosts: Letters in Hardys Poems and Shorter Fictions.- Conclusion, or the Profitable Reading of Letters.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.-