Critics have analyzed at length the philosophy of ironic determinism held by Thomas Hardy, and they have been almost equally voluble in treating the irony that lies like a spinal column in the body of Joseph Conrad's writing. But although the critics have successfully summed up the philosophies of these writers, they have abstained from any satisfactory discussion of the methods of irony which Hardy and Conrad use to illustrate their concepts of irony. The two novelists use differing methods to bring out somewhat differing ideas on life, and I propose here to contrast their methods so as to bring out the distinctive qualities in the method of each.