Thomas Hardy: Appeal to return documents to Dorset

The archive contains letters, books and writings by the acclaimed Dorset author

An appeal has been launched to help return archive manuscripts by writer Thomas Hardy to his home county.

Dorset Archives Trust (DAT) is aiming to buy the collection of 46 documents being sold by a private dealer.

Trust chairman Carola Campbell said it provided "particularly exciting" insights into Hardy's life.

It has already received £45,000 in grants towards the £50,000 asking price, leaving the trust to raise £5,000 from public donations.

The collection is described as the "most significant" Hardy material to come up for sale in many years.

It includes includes books from Hardy's own library at Max Gate near Dorchester, such as his schoolboy-annotated copy of Horace and his personal edition of Pouncy's.

A Christmas card to a maid is among the documents in the archive

There is also a poem, penned by Hardy, referring to soldiers embarking for the Boer War, and a speech he delivered at the opening of Dorchester Grammar School in 1925.

Hardy was born in a secluded thatched cottage in Higher Bockhampton in June 1840 where he lived for most of the first 30 years of his life.

His later works were written at Max Gate, the Dorchester townhouse where he lived from 1885 until his death in 1928.

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Although the location names in his stories and poems were fictional, many of them were based on real places in the county that he knew well.

Ms Campbell said she was "thrilled" at the prospect of acquiring the archive.

She said: "Particularly exciting are the new insights this once hidden treasure of archival material reveals about the private thoughts and life of Thomas Hardy."

If acquired, the archive will be kept and and made accessible to the public in the Dorset History Centre.