Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), enduring author of the twentieth century, wrote the classics Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and many other works. Phillip Mallett is honorary senior lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews, a vice president of the Thomas Hardy Society, and an honorary fellow of both the Centro Universitario di Studi Vittoriani e Edoardiani and the French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies. He was the editor of the Thomas Hardy Journal from 2008 to 2018. His published work includes?Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life; eight edited collections of essays, including?Thomas Hardy in Context?and?The Victorian Novel and Masculinity; Norton Critical Editions of?The Return of the Native and?The Mayor of Casterbridge; and?editions of Under the Greenwood Tree and Flora Thompson’s?Lark Rise to Candleford?for Oxford World’s Classics. Jane Thomas is emeritus professor of English at the University of Hull. She is a vice-president of the Thomas Hardy Society and was for over a decade the Society’s academic director. Her publications include Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent: Reassessing the ‘Minor’ Novels; Thomas Hardy and Desire: Conceptions of the Self; and editions of Hardy’s The Well-Beloved with The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, A Changed Man and Other Stories, and Life’s Little Ironies. She has also written on Thomas Hardy and the visual arts with special reference to the sculpture of Hamo Thornycroft, on Hardy and the Boer War, and on Hardy and masculinity. She is coeditor with Sue Kennedy of British Women’s Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between the Waves.