Thomas Hardy,
born on 2 June 1840, in Stinsford, Dorset, England, was an English novelist and
poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was
influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the
poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian
society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as
those from his native South West England.
While Hardy wrote poetry
throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first
collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the
author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge
(1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895).
During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets
(particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death
his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin.
Many of his novels
concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social
circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex;
initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy’s Wessex eventually
came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire
and much of Berkshire, in south-west and south-central England. Two of his
novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were
listed in the top 50 on the BBC’s survey of best-loved novels, The Big
Read.
