Hardy, Warner and ‘Life’s Little Ironies’

This article is a revised version of a talk given at the ‘Study Weekend’ on Thomas Hardy and Sylvia Townsend Warner held in Dorchester in February 2024. It compares the two writers as ironists, focusing especially on Hardy’s collection of short stories Life’s Little Ironies. It explores the use of titles by both authors and their deployment of what Auden called a ‘hawk’s vision’ of narrative situations. The article ends by comparing the writers’ treatments of sexuality and coincidence. It argues that Warner’s sense of the human world is no less ironic than Hardy’s but that her prevailing tone is less tragic and more celebratory, and that the heart of her writing lies in a relish for ‘the oddness of the world and the surprisingness of mankind’.