A writer who expressed himself prolifically and successfully in both prose and verse, Thomas Hardy hoped to be remembered for his poetry. Toward the end of his life he remarked that his sole literary ambition had been to "have some poem or poems in a good anthology like the Golden Treasury." His achievement vastly exceeded this modest hope. His unique reputation as both a major poet and a major novelist, already established at the time of his death, has only strengthened and developed in the course of this century.

His standing as a writer of short stories, however, is less certain, for critics tend to disagree about the nature and quality of his work in this medium. Some dismiss the majority of his stories as potboilers or elaborately contrived narratives devoid of meaningful character development and thematic depth, recognizing in only a few of his stories the imaginative...