@article{807310,
      recid = {807310},
      author = {Reid, Fred,},
      title = {Thomas Hardy and history /},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {This book addresses the questions 'What did Thomas Hardy  think about history and how did this enter into his  writings?' Scholars have sought answers in 'revolutionary',  'gender', 'postcolonial' and 'millennial' criticism, but  these are found to be unsatisfactory. Fred Reid is a  historian who seeks answers by setting Hardy more fully in  the discourses of philosophical history and the domestic  and international affairs of Britain. He shows how Hardy  worked out, from the late 1850s, his own 'meliorist'  philosophy of history and how it is inscribed in his  fiction. Rooted in the idea of cyclical history as  propounded by the Liberal Anglican historians, it was  adapted after his loss of faith through reading the works  of Auguste Comte, George Drysdale and John Stuart Mill and  used to defend the right of individuals to break with the  Victorian sexual code and make their own 'experiments in  living'.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/807310},
}