The Text is that of the Wessex Edition (1912), the definitive edition. To it are appended Hardey's Explanatory Note to the First Edition (1891) and his Preface to the Fifth and Later Editions (1912) and his Preface to the Fifth and Later Editions (1912). The annotation of the novel has been thoroughly reworked and expanded for the Second Edition of the Norton Critical Edition.
The section entitled "Hardy and the Novel" includes those of Hardy's poems that illuminate Tess, as well as selections from his autobiography that help explain the genesis of the novel. New in this Second Edition is an extract from J.T. Laird's account of the history of the ovel from its first draft to its final revision in the 1920 reprint of the Wessex Edition. Selections from the work of Richard Purdy, and of Ian Gregor and Brian Nichols, tracing the composition and publication of Tess are retained from the First Edition.
Under the heading "Criticism," a sampling of contemporary reviews is given, followed by a group of critical essays. Those by Lionel Johnson, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Donald Davidson, Lort David Cecil and Albert J. Guerard have been retained from the First Edition. To these has been added essays by Dorothy Van Ghent and Irving Howe, and two reviews of books about Hardy's work: J. Hillis Miller discusses Irving Howe's Thomas Hardy, while ugh Kenner analyzes Miller's Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire.