Jane Thomas is emeritus professor of English at the University of Hull. She is a vice-president of the Thomas Hardy Society and was for over a decade the Society’s academic director. Her publications include Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent: Reassessing the ‘Minor’ Novels; Thomas Hardy and Desire: Conceptions of the Self; and editions of Hardy’s The Well-Beloved with The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, A Changed Man and Other Stories, and Life’s Little Ironies. She has also written on Thomas Hardy and the visual arts with special reference to the sculpture of Hamo Thornycroft, on Hardy and the Boer War, and on Hardy and masculinity. She is coeditor with Sue Kennedy of British Women’s Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between the Waves.