Thomas Hardy (1)

Thomas Hardy was born and brought up in the small village of Bockhampton, Dorset, in the west of England, where his father was a master mason. He went to the village school, then on to a high school in the county town of Dorchester, and was then apprenticed to an architect. Later he moved to London to work for another architect, and while he was there he began writing. His second novel, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) was a popular success, and many more novels followed, as well as poetry and short stories.

Thomas Hardy's work is nearly all about his native region, Wessex, which he identified strongly with. As time went by, he became an important literary voice, challenging narrow Victorian morality and religion. His disillusion resulted in Jude the Obscure (1896), his last book. After the Bishop of Wakefield condemned it and burnt his copy, Hardy turned away from fiction and concentrated on poetry for the rest of his life.

Hardy married Emma Gifford in 1874, and she died in 1912. Then he married Florence Dugdale, his secretary. There were no children. He died in 1928 and was buried in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, but his heart was buried separately in Emma's grave at home in Dorset.