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He hadn't finished by yesterday evening
The past perfect for unfulfilled hopes and wishes
We can use the past perfect (or the past simple or progressive) with verbs like expect hope, mean, suppose, think want, to describe things we hoped or wished to do but didn't [> 11.42.3]:
/ had hoped to send him a telegram to congratulate him on his
marriage, but I didn't manage it
Obligatory and non-obligatory uses of the past perfect
We do not always need to use the past perfect to describe which event came first. Sometimes this is perfectly clear, as in:
After I finished, I went home The sequence is often clear in relative clauses [> 1.27] as well:
/ wore the necklace (which) my grandmother (had) left me
We normally use the simple past for events that occur in sequence: / got out of the taxi, paid the fare, tipped the driver and dashed into the station 7 came, I saw, I conquered, ' Julius Caesar declared
But there are instances when we need to be very precise in our use of
past or past perfect, particularly with when:
When I arrived, Anne left (i.e. at that moment)
When I arrived, Anne had left (i.e. before I got there)
In the first sentence, I saw Anne, however briefly. In the second, I
didn't see her at all. See also indirect speech [> 15.12].
9 Verbs, verb tenses, imperatives
We normally use the past perfect with conjunctions like no sooner than or hardly/scarcely/barely when
Mrs Winthrop had no sooner left the room than they began to
gossip about her
Mr Jenkins had hardly/scarcely/barely begun his speech when he
was interrupted
