Sonnets for Our Risorgimento Book

An interesting little oddity I found in the sale section at the library. It has the whiff of self publishment about it, although it was ostensibly published by the otherwise unknown Brunswick Publishing Corporation of Lawrenceville, Virginia. The blurb on the rear cover informs that the author, C.E. (Tiny) May, is a "Renaissance man" and does indeed note a wide range of accomplishments including school administrator, college professor, bank director, director of a summer camp, county chairman of the Democratic party(!).

In any case, the author has churned out a reasonably informative life of Hardy and did a good job relating factual details from his life to parallel occurrences in his novels, poetry etc. The book contains some odd turns of phrase and some clear typos. The most egregious of the latter would be the quotation of little Jude's suicide note as "because we are too many", rather then the correct "menny ". I rather suspect that was the work of one Frances, credited as typist and thanked for suffering in silence for 64 interesting and exciting years. Perhaps Frances extracted some minor payback for her suffering with a few typos.