ABSTRACT
The revisions we have examined so far have told us something about the ‘good hand’ of the early Hardy at work, notably his literary achievements in creating a finer artistic balance, a stronger coherency and autonomy of characterisation, a sharper precision of realistic details, and not least, a more fully developed consciousness of class codes and practices. Simultaneously, many of these textual changes have also told us something about the ‘good hand’ of Leslie Stephen. On matters of propriety he certainly kept Hardy on his toes, and despite his assertions that he was anything but a prude, which Hardy seems, at first, to have believed, his editorial principles could not have fostered many a libertarian among his readers.1
