IDENTIFIERS ----------- id: 166814 accession number: MS 1-1911 DATE AUDIT ---------- created: Saturday 6 August 2011 updated: Monday 4 March 2024 DESCRIPTIVE DATA ---------------- object type: Jude the Obscure has an iconic status in the history of English literature. A key example of the so-called New Fiction, the transitional stage in the development of the English novel between the Victorian and the modern era, it is representative of fin de siècle anxieties. Indeed, Hardy saw Jude the Obscure as the greatest among his ‘novels of character and environment,’ a story ‘of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit.’ This autograph manuscript, now bound as one volume, is Hardy’s handwritten, fair copy of the text. But when Jude was first published in serial form between December 1894 and November 1895 in the English and European editions of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, he was forced to make numerous and substantial changes to avoid scandalizing its family audience. He entered the changes in blue or green ink on this manuscript, and made it clear that the changes were for this specific purpose only, writing on the first page: ‘Alterations and deletions in blue and green are for the serial publication only and have no authority beyond.’ When the text was published in book form in 1896, he reversed many of the changes. (See the proof copy of Jude the Obscure, also in our collections: PB 7-2008). The Fitzwilliam acquired this manuscript in 1911, after Sydney Cockerell, Director (1908-1937), set himself the task of creating a collection of literary manuscripts unique in the context of fine art museums. He wrote to Thomas Hardy asking him to ‘give one of his manuscripts to the Fitzwilliam’, and was invited to Max Gate, Hardy’s ‘modern villa’ outside Dorchester. Cockerell’s diary records that ‘He received me most kindly and I spent a couple of hours with him talking about Morris, architecture etc.’. In fact, Cockerell became Hardy’s literary executor and distributed his manuscripts among leading public institutions, choosing for the Fitzwilliam this autograph manuscript of Jude the Obscure, and his 1911 collection of poems, Times’ Laughingstock. title: novel LICENSING --------- text license status: CC0 image license status: CC-BY-NC-SA OWNERSHIP --------- instutition: The Fitzwilliam Museum department: Manuscripts and Printed Books STABLE URL ---------- url: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/166814 CATEGORIES ------ category: manuscript DATING ------ creation date: 1894 - 1894 creation date earliest: 1894 creation date latest: 1894 CREATORS -------- maker: Hardy, Thomas (writer) DIMENSIONS ---------- dimension: Height value: closed: h. 275 x w. 232 x d. 70 mm EXHIBITIONS HISTORY ------------------- title: The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces CITATIONS -------- Treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum --- IMAGES surrogate: large format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/msspb/msspb5/MS_201_1911_20_28p1_29.jpg height: 760 pixels width: 541 pixels surrogate: mid format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/msspb/msspb5/mid_MS_201_1911_20_28p1_29.jpg height: 702 pixels width: 500 pixels surrogate: original format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/msspb/msspb5/MS_201_1911_20_28p1_29.jpg height: 760 pixels width: 541 pixels surrogate: preview format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/msspb/msspb5/preview_MS_201_1911_20_28p1_29.jpg height: 351 pixels width: 250 pixels surrogate: large format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/642/527/large_MS_1_1911_p1_mas.jpg height: 1207 pixels width: 1024 pixels surrogate: mid format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/642/527/mid_MS_1_1911_p1_mas.jpg height: 589 pixels width: 500 pixels surrogate: original format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/642/527/MS_1_1911_p1_mas.jpg height: 6918 pixels width: 5871 pixels surrogate: preview format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/642/527/preview_MS_1_1911_p1_mas.jpg height: 295 pixels width: 250 pixels surrogate: large format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/664/155/MS_1_1911_Jude_The_Obscure.jpg height: 580 pixels width: 436 pixels surrogate: mid format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/664/155/MS_1_1911_Jude_The_Obscure.jpg height: 580 pixels width: 436 pixels surrogate: original format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/664/155/MS_1_1911_Jude_The_Obscure.jpg height: 580 pixels width: 436 pixels surrogate: preview format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/664/155/preview_MS_1_1911_Jude_The_Obscure.jpg height: 333 pixels width: 250 pixels