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HARDY (THOMAS) Autograph draft of his poem 'A Singer Asleep', signed ('By Thomas Hardy/A.C.S. 1837-1909), Bonchurch, 1910 image 1
HARDY (THOMAS) Autograph draft of his poem 'A Singer Asleep', signed ('By Thomas Hardy/A.C.S. 1837-1909), Bonchurch, 1910 image 2
Lot 263

HARDY (THOMAS)
Autograph draft of his poem 'A Singer Asleep', signed ('By Thomas Hardy/A.C.S. 1837-1909), Bonchurch, 1910

24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £10,000 inc. premium

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HARDY (THOMAS)

Autograph draft of his poem 'A Singer Asleep', signed ('By Thomas Hardy/A.C.S. 1837-1909), title altered from 'A South-Coast Nocturn', 52 lines, in one eight-line and eight five-line stanzas, with substantive autograph revisions to ten lines, beginning "In this fair niche above the slumbering sea...", wrapper inscribed with the title ('A Singer Asleep/Algernon Charles Swinburne/1837-1909') and a note signed by C. H. St. J. Hornby "Given to me by Mrs Thomas Hardy August, 1937", 2 pages, 4to, sewn into a paper wrapper, Bonchurch, 1910

Footnotes

'THE PASSIONATE PAGES OF HIS EARLIER YEARS, / FRAUGHT WITH HOT SIGNS, SAD LAUGHTERS, KISSES, TEARS' — Hardy's admiration for Swinburne. This is the kind of poetical manuscript that Hardy habitually destroyed as soon as he had made a copy for the printer. As a result only a handful of the many poetical manuscripts that survive are working drafts such as the present manuscript. That this draft of 'A Singer Asleep' survived ten years of sifting and destruction may suggest how important the poem was to Hardy personally. Three other manuscripts are recorded, all unrevised fair copies (Battersea District Library, British Library and Dorset County Museum).

Hardy was a tremendous admirer and friend of Swinburne, whose death in April 1909 was a great shock to him. In March 1910 he and Florence Dugdale, later the second Mrs Hardy, went to the Isle of Wight to visit Swinburne's grave, where he is reputed to have written this poem. The poem was 'half finished' by 13 March 1910 and was published in the English Review in April of that year.

Provenance: Florence Hardy; St. J. Hornby; David Holmes; Frederick Adams; J.O. Edwards (bookplate).

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