This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 Wessex Edition,emended to correct errors that have crept into the text from the manu-script onwards and to incorporate revisions that Hardy made in his "study copy" of the novel and in his marked printer's copy and pageproofs for a Harper and Brothers "sixpenny edition" of 190 I, whenever these revisions can confidently be judged to represent Hardy's final de-liberate intention. The resulting text includes revisions by Hardy that have never before appeared in a modern edition. The novel is fully an-notated and is accompanied by Hardy's map of Wessex and a simplified map of the landscape of Far from the MaddbN Crou,d. Textual notes in-clude a list of emendations, examples of variant readings from the man-uscript to the Wessex Edition, and a discussion of the choice of copytext. The textual history of the novel is traced in extracts from studies by Richard Little Purdy and Simon GatrelI.     Background and source materials include extracts from correspon-dence and contemporary reviews. Twentieth-century criticism is repre-sented by Howard Babb, Roy Morrell, Alan Friedman, J. Hillis Miller,Michael Millgate, Penelope Vigar, Peter Casagrande, and Ian Gregor.     作者简介:     THE EDITOR: ROBERT C. SCIIWEIK is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Eng-lish at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, and a vice presi-dent of the Thomas Hardy Society (UK) and the international Hardy Associa-tion. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Trier, Germany, and Stockhohn University, Sweden, and a Fcllow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright-IIays Pro-gram. He is co-author of Reference Sources in English and American Lite~ture and Hart Crane: A Descriptive Bibliogphy; contributor to the Cambridge Com panion to Thomas Hard)'; editor of Wathering Heights; and author of articles on Itardy, Robert Browning, J. S. Mill, and aspects of cultural history