Hardy was desperate to keep the notebook secret and asked for it to be burnt after his death in 1928, but it was saved by his executors and is now to be published for the first time.
Among the dozens of articles copied down by Hardy in the notebook is one that formed the basis for the coach crash that was central to the plot of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Another article recounts a “wife sale” similar to the opening scene of The Mayor of Casterbridge.
William Greenslade, principal English lecturer at the University of the West of England and editor of the notebook — which Hardy called Facts from Newspapers, Histories, Biographies and Other Chronicles — believes that the author was uneasy at the thought of readers knowing that he had taken some of his best ideas from the local press.
“There is an embarrassment that he feels about his reliance upon these sources and this was why he was so secretive and wanted the book destroyed,” said Greenslade.
The notebook, which is to be published early next year by Ashgate, is one of several books that were saved by Hardy’s executors when he died in 1928 but is the only one that illustrates him copying news reports from local papers. Others deal with architecture, painting and literary notes. They are held in the Dorset county museum.
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Hardy began the 221-page bound notebook in 1883 and also includes some extracts from histories and biographies at the time. The book mainly consists, however, of systematic note-taking from editions of the Dorset County Chronicle from 1826 to 1830, a time of economic downturn and a much more primitive and lawless society than that of the late 1880s when Hardy was writing.
He was trying to build up a picture of the disintegrating rural society in which several of his novels are set, before the more comfortable urban era in the late 19th century.
Hardy would borrow old editions of the paper from his local library and take them back to his house in Dorchester. There he would read the papers and either copy some of the articles himself or detail Emma, his first wife, to write down the desired extracts. Parts of the notebook are in her hand.
In one entry Hardy notes an account of a coach crash from an edition of the Dorset County Chronicle of August 19, 1830, under the heading “shaft of wagon enters breast of ridden horse”. This crash and small details from others provide the basis for the incident in Tess of the d’Urbervilles when Prince, the family horse, is fatally wounded in a crash with a mail coach.
This proves the end of Tess’s family’s trading business and puts her on the beginning of a road to ruin. The novel was the basis of one of the best-known films of Hardy’s work, made in 1980 and starring Nastassja Kinski as Tess.
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There is also an account of a wife sale in Stamford, Lincolnshire, copied by Hardy from the October 1, 1829 edition of the Chronicle. Next to it he has written in pencil “Used in the Mayor of Casterbridge”. Selling a family was an illegal but frequent method used by men to raise money in the period written about by Hardy.
In the opening scene of The Mayor of Casterbridge, Michael Henchard, an unemployed farm labourer, gets drunk at a fair and sells his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas.
Another entry shows how the action for a wrestling scene in the book between Henchard and Donald Farfrae, the main characters, came from an 1829 report of a wrestling match in St Thomas’s parish of Exeter.
Hardy scholars claim publishing the book provides an insight into how the author wanted his books to be partly social history rather than just invention.
Michael Millgate, a Hardy biographer and professor of English at Toronto University, said: “Hardy was always happier if he could find factual historical material to work with rather than just making it up.
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It portrays him as a historian who used stories in the paper as the basis of plot or specific episodes.”
Fred Read, retired senior history lecturer at Warwick University and a Hardy expert, believes that he was looking for more than just colourful stories in his note-taking. He points to a more political side of Hardy, as the notebook also contains accounts of election meetings and poll results in Dorchester.
“He takes a historical interest in the destruction of the peasantry and small farmers and the growth of large estates,” said Read. “It shows a more radical and political side to him and how he was trying to immerse himself into a much darker age than his own.”
It is thought that Florence, Hardy’s second wife who survived him, probably saved the books from destruction.
Hardy scholars are sympathetic to his view that the notebook should be nobody’s business but his own. “He didn’t see why he should reveal the notebooks with which he had worked, as he wanted people to read the novel, not the raw material,” said Millgate.