Thomas Hardy's 'Life's Little Ironies': A textual and materialist analysis and critical edition

This dissertation is an historical and textual examination and a critical edition of Thomas Hardy's Life's Little Ironies. The first section constructs the textual history of Life's Little Ironies and suggests that Hardy consciously or unconsciously was creating an unified short story cycle by his adjustment and emendation of the collection. As a short story cycle, Life's Little Ironies is a revealing example of the connections between economic and aesthetic concerns. The next section, with an eye to materialist theory on the model of Frederic Jameson and Terry Eagleton, contends that the short story cycle genre is particularly receptive to the kind of social and cultural concerns which Hardy addresses in these stories and elsewhere; the study of these stories as an example of this genre ultimately confronts these economic and social issues. The textual commentary discusses the rationale for choice of copy-text on the basis of probable authority for accidentals. The actual emended text of Life's Little Ironies follows in clear-text; supporting the text are the requisite critical apparatus: historical collation, notes on textual cruces, and end-line hyphenation tables. It concludes with a general statement about the editorial work and a discussion of the aims of editing using computer technology.