In Our Time (radio series)

Thomas Hardy's Poetry, first broadcast January 13, 2022 Most readers meet Hardy through novels such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but once his fiction had earned him enough, he gave up novels in the 1890s and spent the rest of his life on the poetry he prized far above them, hoping to be ranked one day alongside Shelley and Byron. Mark Ford, Jane Thomas and Tim Armstrong unpick the poems, above all the Poems of 1912-13 that grew out of his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma. The best way into the literature strand for anyone who assumes a discussion of poetry is not for them.