Although in his desire to retain his privacy Hardy destroyed many personal documents before his death, a substantial amount of material relating to his life and art remains in the form of letters, notebooks, interviews, and essays. The following is a list of resources which provide access to that material.

Letters

Hardy, Evelyn and F. B. Pinion (eds). One Rare Fair Woman: Thomas Hardy’s Letters to Florence Hennicker 1893-1922. London: Macmillan, 1972.

Purdy, Richard L. and Michael Millgate (eds). The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978-1988.

Millgate, Michael (ed). Thomas Hardy: Selected Letters. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

Millgate, Michael (ed). Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

Notebooks

Beatty, C. J. P. (ed). The Architectural Notebook of Thomas Hardy. Dorchester: Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1966.

Taylor, Richard L. (ed). The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan, 1979.

Björk, Lennart (ed). The Literary Notebooks of Thomas Hardy. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1985.

Dalziel, Pamela and Michael Millgate (eds). Thomas Hardy’s ‘Studies, Specimens etc.’ Notebook. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.

Greenslade, William (ed).  Thomas Hardy’s ‘Facts’ Notebook.  Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

Essays and Prefaces

Orel, Harold (ed). Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings. London: Macmillan, 1967.

Millgate, Michael (ed).  Thomas Hardy’s Public Voice: The Essays, Speeches, and Miscellaneous Prose.  Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.

Memoirs and Interviews

Archer, William. Real Conversations. London: Heinemann, 1904.

Collins, Vere H. Talks with Thomas Hardy at Max Gate 1920-1922. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928.

Hardy, Evelyn and Robert Gittings (ed). Some Recollections: by Emma Hardy. Together with some relevant Poems by Thomas Hardy. Oxford: OUP, 1961; 1979.

Taylor, Richard H. (ed). Diaries [by Emma Hardy]. Northumberland: Carcanet New Press, 1985.

Gibson, James (ed). Thomas Hardy: Interviews and Recollections. London: Macmillan, 1999.