Literary Soulmates

Despite the substantial amount of time I have spent over the years in the company of his writings, Thomas Hardy has only ever figured once in my dreams. I was hosting a dinner party at which Hardy was proving to be an amiable guest, particularly after a glass or two of wine. He had been commenting at some length, and plausibly enough given their shared Dorset associations, on what a nice man he had found John Fowles to be. Lulled into a false sense of confidence by his apparently easygoing relationship with conventional temporal constraints, I asked him if he had ever met Michael Millgate. He looked at me somewhat quizzically, perhaps even with a touch of condescension, and said, “Of course not. I was dead before he was born.”

Notwithstanding the unfaultable logic displayed by my dream-conjured Hardy, readers of Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited might be forgiven for coming away from this book with the impression that Hardy and Millgate must have been on...