The Mellstock edition, a deluxe edition limited to 500 copies signed by the author on the limitation page in volume I. Initially discussed as early as July 1914, the start of the Great War halted production and the actual publication did not begin until December 1919. The edition name is a reference to the mythical "Mellstock" of Hardy's fiction, a combination of the tiny Dorset hamlet Stinsford with the Higher and Lower Bockhamptons. At Stinsford his grandfather was a co-founder of the church "quire"; the churchyard contains the remains of both Hardy's wives, Emma Gifford Hardy and Florence Dugdale Hardy, as well as Hardy's heart, the rest of his body having been interred in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.
The post The Works. appeared first on Peter Harrington.
