A hitherto unpublished early letter from Hardy, responding to a question from JH Nodal, Secretary of the English Dialect Society, about the dialects used in Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Hand of Ethelberta and A Pair of Blue Eyes. Hardy replied that he used the Dorset dialect with which he was acquainted, but sparingly and only where it would not appear to the London reader to be mere mispronunciation of standard English
