Woman Much Missed

The first book-length analysis of Thomas Hardy's nearly 150 poems, which he wrote after the passing of his first wife Emma in November 1912, is titled Woman Deeply Missed. These poems are used by Mark Ford to create a narrative about their four-year courtship on the lovely and lonely shore of Cornwall, where they first met. Thomas then uses poetry to recreate the gradual breakdown of their marriage and their sad final decade. Ford demonstrates how Thomas's development as a best-selling novelist and one of the finest poets of the 20th century was greatly influenced by Emma's writings and experiences at this period. Although Thomas and Emma's marriage had been rocky for more than ten years and Emma had spent a lot of time alone in the attic chambers above his study in her later years, her passing inspired him to write some of the greatest elegies in English. Twenty-one of these, including masterpieces such as 'The Voice' (which opens 'Woman dearly missed, how you speak to me, call to me') and 'After a Voyage' were collected in 'Poems of 1912-13'. His countless other poems on Emma have received little attention, despite the fact that both schoolchildren and college students frequently read these. Ford corrects this omission by offering understandable and perceptive interpretations from the viewpoint of a poet.