SOURCE: “The Immediate Source of The Dynasts,¹” in PMLA, Vol. LXVII, No. 2, March, 1952, pp. 43-64.

In the following essay, Fairchild traces evidence that suggests Buchanan's The Drama of Kings as a source of Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts.

In my opinion Robert (“Fleshly School”) Buchanan's The Drama of Kings (1871) exerted so strong an influence on Hardy's Dynasts that it deserves to be regarded as the immediate source of that work. The contention would appear to be virginal.² The biographies and critical studies of Abercrombie, Blunden, Brennecke, Chakravarty, Chew, Duffin, Florence Emily Hardy, Hedgcock, Holland, McDowall, Rutland, Southworth, Symons, Weber, and Webster provide, in their greatly varying degree, suggestions as to the philosophical and literary background of Hardy's trilogy. None of them, however, suggests any relation between The Dynasts and The Drama of Kings. In fact none of them even mentions the name of Robert Williams Buchanan with the exception...