The Author

Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, was born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorsetshire, in 1840. In 1856 he was apprenticed to a local architect engaged in restoring old churches. In 1862 he moved to London to work for the architect Arthur Blomfield. Meanwhile, he was writing poetry with little success. In 1871 he published his first novel and in the following years he produced one novel after another. In 1874 he married Emma Gifford. In 1885 the couple moved to Max Gate on the edge of Dorchester, where they spent the rest of their lives. Emma died in 1912, and Hardy married Florence Dugdale in 1914. In his last decade, he gained numerous public honours and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hardy died at the age of 87 in 1928.

The Work

"How I Built Myself a House" (1865)
The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, lost)
Desperate Remedies (1871)
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
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)
The Woodlanders (1887)
Wessex Tales (1888)
A Group of Noble Dames (1891)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
Life's Little Ironies (1894)
Jude the Obscure (1895)
The Well-Beloved (1897)
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
Poems of the Past and the Present (1902)
The Dynasts (drama, 1903-8)
Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913)
Satires of Circumstances (1914)
Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917)
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1922)
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwal (drama, 1923)
Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs, and Trifles (1925)
Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928)
An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (1976)
Letters

Appendix

The Thomas Hardy Association
Sources/Colophon