The stories that comprise Life's Little Ironies (1894) date from the same five-year period: one from 1888, five from 1891 and two from 1893. Given this relatively concentrated time-span, it is unsurprising that the volume as a whole shows a marked consistency in choice of theme and situation. The earliest story, ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’ (1888), revolves around the inability of two brothers to transcend their humble origins in order to pursue a successful career in the Church – like many of Hardy's characters, they live in the shadow of previous generations, whose influence they resent – while the final story, ‘An Imaginative Woman’ (1893), concerns, among other things, the inability of a mother to discharge her responsibilities towards her children.

The volume as a whole seems obsessed with the failure of nineteenthcentury men and women to negotiate a creative and meaningful relationship with both the past and the future, and this general concern with legacies is given a sharp focus by Hardy's anxiety at this time over the status of his own literary legacy, both in its interpretation of the past and in its susceptibility to misinterpretation in the future.