Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/196

 part of Tess, a still more passionate study of unusual psychological phenomena of an erotic type, aggravated by their setting in conditions governed by characteristically British social and academic prejudices. A copy of this "dangerous" book was publicly incinerated by an official of the Church, possibly, as Hardy remarked, because of his chagrin at being unable to accord the same treatment to its author.

1897: The Well-Beloved, a curious, semi-allegorical, semi-absurd treatment of the vagaries of ideal love.

In 1913 the scattered remains of Hardy's fiction were gathered together in a single volume, called A Changed Man and Other Stories. These, together with the stray essays recently collected and published under the title Life and Art complete the sum of his significant prose works.

Max Gate was built in 1885, from Hardy's own designs, not far from the house of William Barnes. By a turn of circumstance worthy of a place in the novels, the tract of land selected for the site of his permanent home was found to cover an ancient Roman cemetery, containing the remains of a whole platoon of Hadrian's military forces, and of a lady of evident nobility, whose brooch is now an interesting item in Hardy's collection of local antiquities.