Thomas Hardy frequently insisted that his poems were not self-expressive but dramatic or 'impersonative'. Yet biographical expositions have dulled their impersonality. Brian Green's approach is more exacting and rewarding: taking Hardy at his word, he traces Hardy's 'master theme' throughout the corpus of poems - a governing concern which merges Victorian and perennial ideas informing Hardy's prose writings, non-fiction as well as fiction.

Hardy's lyrics are instinct with the endeavour of the ethical imagination to improve human nature and society through fellow-feeling, in the face of 'the Worst' - the physical and psychological suffering due to living in an amoral and unfeeling universe. Green explores five Hardyan ways of dealing philosophically with this confusion.

These strategies of solace find their embodiment in the interplay between images of enclosure, extension and dimension, which condense the tensions and complexities in Hardy's master theme. This miniaturising convention, Green suggests, is the true stamp and virtue of Hardy's poetic art.