Olivia Laing at The Guardian:
How Thomas Hardy would have hated this book. In his 70s, this most secretive of men burned old letters, diaries and manuscripts on a bonfire in his garden. His paranoia had been stoked by the publication of a critical biography. “Too personal, and in bad taste, even supposing it were true, which it is not!” he wrote indignantly in the margin.
His solution was to seize control of the narrative with a sleight of hand designed to make it seem as if he wasn’t there at all. He wrote his own life story in the third person, to be published as a posthumous biography purportedly authored by his second wife, Florence. In it he made his position clear: “Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.”
more here.