ABSTRACT
The manuscript of 'An Imaginative Woman' was presented by Hardy to Aberdeen University Library in 1911 when he was distributing his MSS. among various public collections. Aberdeen University had conferred on him the honorary degree of LLD in April 1905, his first academic distinction. This chapter will study the changes in the manuscript which indicate the evolution of the story, the subsequent three publications of it which have textual significance, and in addition it will offer some observations on the important contribution which Hardy's friendship with Florence Henniker made to the writing of the work, as revealed by the MS. This story had a special place in Hardy's affections, perhaps because of its association with her, and during a conversation at Max Gate in August 1909 with Walter Peirce, an American enthusiast, Hardy remarked that 'of his stories, his favorite was An Imaginative Woman, "the best piece of prose fiction I ever wrote"' (Peirce, p. 194).
