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Hardy originally
envisaged Tess as a newspaper serial, but as the story
unfolded it became clear that its content - which included a passionate
love-scene and an illegitimate birth - would not be acceptable in
this form. The manuscript was returned by Tillotson's Newspaper
Fiction Bureau, which had already agreed a fee of a thousand guineas,
and rejected by two further literary journals before a revised version
was accepted for serialisation in The Graphic during 1891.
Most of the omitted passages were restored in the three-volume edition
published later the same year, but for Hardy, tired of pandering
to the sensibilities of magazine editors, it was 'the beginning
of the end of his career as a novelist'.
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