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The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Thomas Hardy. Many giants of Literature originate from the shores of these emerald isles; Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, The Brontes and Austen to which most people would willingly add the name Thomas Hardy. Far From The Madding Crowd, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, The Mayor Of Casterbridge are but three of his literary masterpieces. But let us add to this his short stories. They are often overlooked as being the poor, under-developed relative of a greater work. But from writers of the calibre of Hardy this is just not so. He picks stories and creates characters that drive, meld and create pages that in their numerically shorter length are in fact the perfect length. Many of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth. Many samples are at our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee The full volume can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores. They are read for you by Richard Mitchley

The first book-length analysis of Thomas Hardy's nearly 150 poems, which he wrote after the passing of his first wife Emma in November 1912, is titled Woman Deeply Missed. These poems are used by Mark Ford to create a narrative about their four-year courtship on the lovely and lonely shore of Cornwall, where they first met. Thomas then uses poetry to recreate the gradual breakdown of their marriage and their sad final decade. Ford demonstrates how Thomas's development as a best-selling novelist and one of the finest poets of the 20th century was greatly influenced by Emma's writings and experiences at this period. Although Thomas and Emma's marriage had been rocky for more than ten years and Emma had spent a lot of time alone in the attic chambers above his study in her later years, her passing inspired him to write some of the greatest elegies in English. Twenty-one of these, including masterpieces such as 'The Voice' (which opens 'Woman dearly missed, how you speak to me, call to me') and 'After a Voyage' were collected in 'Poems of 1912-13'. His countless other poems on Emma have received little attention, despite the fact that both schoolchildren and college students frequently read these. Ford corrects this omission by offering understandable and perceptive interpretations from the viewpoint of a poet.