The Respectable Burgher

Portrait of Hardy by William Strang, 1893

"The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism" is a poem by Thomas Hardy. It was originally published in 1901 in his collection Poems of the Past and Present.

Background

The "higher criticism" that Hardy refers to is criticism that refutes the literal truth of Biblical Scripture, and gives scientific evidence against the supposed revealed truth of the Bible.^[1]

Critical response

Hardy had claimed that what couldn't be easily said in prose could be said in verse, and as there was no public outcry in regard to Poems of the Past and Present, along with "The Respectable Burgher" and its other contents, he seems to have been proven right. Criticism of the volume was mostly favorable; Sir George Douglas thought that it was better than Hardy's previous volume Wessex Poems and Other Verses, and The Saturday Review, although it repeated complaints that Hardy's poems were "harsh and unmusical", stated that "almost every poem had something to say with an arresting quality."^[2]

References

↑ Mezey, Robert (1998). Selected Poems by Thomas Hardy. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0140436995. Retrieved 2012-04-04.
↑ Gibson, James (1996). Thomas Hardy: a Literary Life. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 147. ISBN 0312159455.

Thomas Hardy (works)

Novels	The Poor Man and the Lady (1867) Desperate Remedies (1871) Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) The Return of the Native (1878) The Trumpet-Major (1880) A Laodicean (1881) Two on a Tower (1882) The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) The Woodlanders (1887) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891/92) Jude the Obscure (1895) The Well-Beloved (1897)

Short story collections	Wessex Tales (1888) A Group of Noble Dames (1891) Life's Little Ironies (1894) A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913)

Short stories	"The Three Strangers" (1883) "A Mere Interlude" (1885) "Alicia's Diary" (1887) "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1891) "The Fiddler of the Reels" (1893) "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" (1894)

Poetry collections	Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898) Poems 1912–13 Satires of Circumstance (1914)

Poems	"Neutral Tones" (1898) "The Darkling Thrush" (1901) "The Ruined Maid" (1901) "The Respectable Burgher" (1901) "The Man He Killed" (1902) "A Trampwoman's Tragedy" (1903) "The Convergence of the Twain" (1915) "The Blinded Bird" (1916)

Plays	The Dynasts (1904–1908)

Related	Thomas Hardy's Wessex Egdon Heath

Life	Thomas Hardy's Cottage Max Gate home Emma Gifford (first wife) Florence Dugdale (second wife)

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