Thomas Hardy and Victorian Communication [electronic resource] : Letters, Telegrams and Postal Systems / by Karin Koehler.

Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: 'A Modern Wessex of the penny post' -- 1. 'The speaking age is passing away, to make room for the writing age': From Oral Tradition to Written Culture -- 2. 'Inconvenient old letters': Letters and Privacy in Hardy's Fiction -- 3. 'A more material existence than her own': Epistolary Selves in Hardy's Fiction -- 4. 'Never so nice in your real presence as you are in your letters': Letters and Desire in Jude the Obscure. 5.'A Story of to-day': Hardy's Postal Plots -- 6. 'Unopened and forgotten': Letters from the Margins -- 7. Epistolary Ghosts: Letters in Hardy's Poems and Shorter Fictions -- Conclusion, or the Profitable Reading of Letters -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.-.

This book explores the relationship between Thomas Hardy's works and Victorian media and technologies of communication - especially the penny post and the telegraph. Through its close analysis of letters, telegrams, and hand-delivered notes in Hardy's 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. .