Thomas Hardy
1840–1928

Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet, was born at Upper Bockhampton in Dorset on 2 June 1840. He first practised as an architect, in 1863 gaining the prize and medal of the Institute of British Architects. His first published work was an essay in Chamber’s Journal (1865) – to which he contributed a poem sixty years later. His intention was now to became an art critic, but the experiment of a not wholly unsuccessful novel, Desperate Remedies (1871) shaped his destiny otherwise. Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) and A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) preceded his first great work, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). It was followed by The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), The Return of the Native (1878), The Trumpet Major (1880), A Laodicean (1881), Two on a Tower (1882), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), A Group of Noble Dames (1891), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895), The Well-beloved (1897), Wessex Poems (1899), The Dynasts (a Napoleonic epic-drama, 1904–08), and collections of lyrics. He married in 1874 and again in 1914. Last of the great Victorians, he died on 11 January 1928.