ABSTRACT
The new novel, Desperate Remedies, seemed to show signs of Thomas Hardy having absorbed nuances of atmosphere, even traits of language, from Wilkie Collins, from Harrison Ainsworth, perhaps from Mary Elizabeth Braddon. In his memoirs Tinsley remembered how he had purchased the copyright of Hardy’s second novel, Under the Greenwood Tree. Edward Chapman and William Hall, with whom he had a slight link, and whose reader, George Meredith, had recommended him to write what Hardy understood to be a story of this kind, is inexplicable. Gittings comments that had Hardy indeed sent Desperate Remedies to Chapman & Hall, it ‘almost certainly would have only earned him another Meredithian lecture, whereas Tinsley, with a list of sensation-novels was a much likelier house.’ Hardy agreed to make the changes, and on 9 December Tinsley wrote again to acknowledge receipt of the altered and completed manuscript.
