Thomas Hardy
 | Thomas Hardy (June 2, 1840 – January 11, 1928) was an English novelist and poet noted for his realistic novels set in southwestern England in the fictional region of Wessex. He was born in Dorset in a hamlet known as Upper Bockhampton. His father was a builder and stonemason; his mother was well-read and tutored him before he attended Mr. Last’s Academy for Young Gentlemen. He was apprenticed to a local architect before moving to London in 1862 to enroll in King’s College London. After five years he returned to Dorset to pursue writing due to health concerns and an acute awareness of his social inferiority in the unforgiving English class system. The success of Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874 enabled him to give up architectural work and write ten more novels over the next twenty-five years. Like Dickens, his work challenged the morals of the day: Tess of the D’Ubervilles (1891) was criticized for its sympathetic portrayal of a “fallen woman” and Jude the Obscure (1895) was for its frank treatment of sex. He gave up writing novels and turned to poetry, publishing Wessex in 1898. He wrote in a variety of forms, often in colloquial diction, and centered on themes of disappointment and the perversity of fate. Hardy is now considered one of the finest twentieth century poets, having influenced Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, and Philip Larkin. He died in 1927 of pleurisy and is buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. |
Far From The Madding Crowd
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1874, centers on its hero..
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The Return of the Native
The Return of the Native was Thomas Hardy’s sixth novel. It was serialized in Belgravia magazi..
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