ABSTRACT
Current academic interest in film and television productions based on Thomas Hardy’s work indicates a distinct shift in scholarship. Until the early 1990s ‘Hardy and Film’ was a marginal area of study, the limited number of adaptations commanding the attention mainly of hobbyists and cinema specialists, with the occasional lone Hardy scholar – notably David Lodge – lending credibility to the discipline. Beginning in the early 1990s, however, visual media studies in general and studies of Hardy in particular grew both in number and in popularity, so that today the subject is supported by a noteworthy body of books, articles, web-based resources and university courses. That cinema and television have contributed to modern perceptions of Hardy is now a widely accepted tenet. This chapter will endeavour to show how these studies of ‘Hardy and Film’ have developed into the new millennium.
