About the Author

Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool, where she is a Research Fellow in English Literature. Her first book, Jane Austen and the Theatre, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize. Her second book, Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson , the tale of the scandalous star of the 18th-century stage, literature and high-society, was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. Her most recent book is Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead. The story of Evelyn Waugh's friendship with the extraordinary aristocratic family who inspired Brideshead Revisited, it was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. A regular contributor to the 'Times Literary Supplement', she lives in Warwickshire with her two young children and her husband, the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate.

Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR HARDY WOMEN ‘Absorbing… a treat for Hardy fans and unhappy wives’ The Times ‘Novelist and poet Thomas Hardy created some of literature’s most enduring female characters … but it is the real women who shaped the life of the tortured genius that a book vividly reanimates’ Independent 'Magnificent… a masterful storyteller and meticulous researcher, Byrne shows us how the women in Hardy's work are based on the women in his life. But she does so with the delicacy of a hummingbird, darting from point to point, suggesting but never concluding' Washington Post 'By turns infuriating and inspiring, but always fascinating, this page-turner of a book offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of Victorian Britain’s most famous writers' Gareth Russell, author of The Palace ‘A fascinating re-examination of the life of Thomas Hardy through the eyes of the women who profoundly influenced him-his mother, his sisters, girlfriends, wives and muses. Drawing on access to some neverbefore-seen passages in Hardy's journals, she shows that it is through these hardy women that we can truly appreciate his much-loved works’ The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice