ABSTRACT
Charles Lewis Hind On my way to Max Gate I called at a bookshop in Dorchester and inquired of an elderly, prim, and rather tart female if she had a copy of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, which had lately been published, and which had been received by what is known in England as the ‘rectory public’ somewhat superciliously. I think it shocked them. In response to my inquiry the prim female said that she had not a copy of Jude the Obscure in stock. ‘What!’ I cried, ‘in his native Dorchester you have not a copy of the latest book by the greatest living English novelist’. She eyed me with hauteur, and, tossing her head, said: ‘Perhaps we have not the same opinion of Mr Hardy in Dorchester as you have elsewhere’.
