This book explores the relationship between Thomas Hardyâs works and Victorian media and technologies of communication â especially the penny post and the telegraph. Through its close analysis of letters, telegrams, and hand-delivered notes in Hardyâs novels, short stories, and poems, it ties together a wide range of subjects: technological and infrastructural developments; material culture; individual subjectivity and the construction of identity; the relationship between private experience and social conventions; and the new narrative possibilities suggested by modern modes of communication.
