Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors A Note on Texts Used Introduction: Hardy and Literary Studies at the Turn of the Century; T.Dolin & P.Widdowson Flesh and Spirit in Thomas Hardy; T.Eagleton Hardy and the Limits of Culturalism; G.Davidson Speech Acts, Decisions, and Community in The Mayor of Casterbridge; J.Hillis Miller Hardy or James? Thoughts on Academic Literary Discrimination Today; S.During Hardy, Barbarism and the Transformations of Modernity; B.Neilson A Laodicean: Hardy and the Philosophy of Money; R.Ebbatson Story, History, Allegory: Some Ironies of Jude the Obscure from a Benjamin Perspective; M.Hollington The Contemporary, the All: Liberal Politics and the Origins of Wessex; T.Dolin 'Saying that now you are not as you were': Hardy's 'Poems of 1912-13'; L.M.Shires Hardy, History and Recorded Music; T.Armstrong Hardy and Contemporary Textual Studies: Authorial Intention in The Trumpet-Major; M.Rimmer Thomas Hardy at the End of Two Centuries: From Page to Screen; P.Widdowson Works Cited Index