Thomas Hardy's "Studies, Specimens &c." notebook, dating from the mid-1860s, preserves unique evidence of the studies of other writers and the self-assigned exercises in vocabulary-building and poetic techniques by which he so deliberately sought to make himself into a poet at the very beginning of his literary career. This edition presents the manuscript in quasi-facsimile, with full annotation of Hardy's sources, allusions, and intentions, as far as they can be interpreted.