Although Hardy was, so remarkably, a twentieth-century poet as well as a nineteenth-century novelist, the date of his birth is now nearly one hundred and sixty years distant, the date of his death already seventy. His immense fame in his own lifetime aroused an inquisitiveness as to his personal life that he sought strenuously to resist, and since his death his continuing, even increasing, reputation and popularity have naturally attracted the attention of biographers. Notoriously, however, Hardy's concern for privacy extended beyond his own death, encompassed the destruction of most of his personal papers and the composition of his own posthumously published official “life,” and was endorsed (even though they agreed on little else) by his literary executors.

In these circumstances, and at this distance in time, it seems appropriate to stand back a little from the narrative preoccupations of biography proper and attempt some examination of the sources currently available for the study of Hardy’s life and career. Of particular importance are those documentary materials (notebooks, letters, manuscripts) already in print or on microfilm, their wide accessibility enabling students and readers everywhere to approach Hardy directly and establish a “personal” relationship independent of - though not necessarily uninformed by - the published biographies. Such firsthand experiences can be enriching in themselves, and the starting-points of individual scholarship. They can also serve as touchstones by which to assess the tone, temper, and interpretive biases of different biographers and interrogate not only the adequacy and accuracy of their evidence but also the specificity, or absence of specificity, with which the sources of that evidence are identified. At the very least, they sharpen awareness of just how “knowable” a figure Hardy is now or ever can be.