I began this study by asking in what ways Hardy might be ‘our contemporary’: widely read, studied, and reproduced, what does his work mean to us in the early twenty-first century? The study's answers, such as they are, have been oblique and implicit, and so perhaps they should be summarized here. First, there is no one ‘Hardy’ – no ‘true’ or essential figuration to be discovered and revealed amongst all the (mis)representations of him. Leaving aside the more obvious generic distinctions – Hardy the novelist, Hardy the poet (plus Hardy the short-storywriter and essayist: but surely it is indeed a misrepresentation to divide him thus, rather than to see him comprised of all these genres) – we may still see quite different Hardys in the contemporary critical treatment of him as novelist and as poet. In the former case, most modern criticism now evinces the influence of Marxist, feminist, and poststructuralist theories and practices, and Hardy's novels have been refashioned as potentially radical and subversive textualities – a process with which the present study aligns itself. Hardy the poet, on the other hand, remains largely constrained within the naturalized critical consensus both as to his canon of ‘finest’ work and, codeterminately, to his ‘characteristic’ nature and achievement. In this case, therefore, I have attempted to bring into view the subliminal construction of Hardy the Poet, and to hint that it might be at once limiting and susceptible to reconstruction. Secondly, and as a consequence of there being no one ‘Hardy’, it is apparent that there are indeed radically different versions of him simultaneously present in our culture – including, importantly, those implied by the (re)presentations of his texts flickering in increasing numbers across our screens (‘1996 … the year of the Wessex poet and novelist’) whatever it may be we think they imply – if we do think about it, that is. Thirdly, following from all this – but also its primary instigation – is the study's belief that, if Hardy is our contemporary – as he clearly seems to be – then it is we who make him so.