''Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles'' is the penultimate collection of poems by
English poet
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...
, and was published in 1925. A miscellaneous collection, ''Human Shows'' included old, new, and updated poems.
Themes and tone
The most cheerful of Hardy's collections, ''Human Shows'' has been seen as reflecting something of an
Indian summer
An Indian summer is a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather that sometimes occurs in autumn in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. Several sources describe a true Indian summer as not occurring until after the first frost, or mor ...
on its author's part: he himself, in his introduction to ''
Winter Words'', feared that he had been “too liberal in selecting flippant, not to say farcical, pieces into the collection”. A
pastoral
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...
tone prevails, often dramatising characters from Hardy's fiction, and at times Hardy even seems to burlesque some of his own tragic themes - of ironic accidents and patterned fate – as in the sketch "Snow in the Suburbs".
The collection includes more serious poems as well – memories of friends and family gone, as well as of his first wife
Emma. "Alike and Unalike" records the beginning dissension in his marriage with his attachment to
Florence Henniker
Florence Henniker (December 1855 – 4 April 1923) was a British poet and novelist.
Biography
Florence Ellen Hungerford Milnes was born in December 1855 in London. The daughter of Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, and his wife, the ...
; and "Nobody Comes" records his lonely wait for his second wife
Florence Dugdale
Florence Emily Dugdale (12 January 187917 October 1937) was an English teacher and children's writer, who was the second wife of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. She was credited as the author of Hardy's posthumously published biography, ''The ...
to return after an operation in London.
[J. C. Brown, ''A Journey into Thomas Hardy's Poetry'' (London 1989) p. 118]
See also
*
Thomas Hardy's Wessex
Thomas Hardy's Wessex is the fictional literary landscape created by the English author Thomas Hardy as the setting for his major novels, located in the south and South West England, southwest of England. Hardy named the area "Wessex" after Wess ...
References
External links
*
1925 poems
English poetry collections
Poetry by Thomas Hardy
{{poetry-collection-stub