Thomas Hardy Biography and latest books by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (born on June 2 , 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. While his works essentially belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial reasons, was much better known for his novels, such as Tess of the d\'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a great novelist. The major protion of his fictional works, initially published in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex and explored tragic characters struggling against their interests and social circumstances.

Hardy\'s poetry, first published in his fifties, has come to be as well regarded as his novels and has had a significant influence over modern English poetry.
 

His novels
Hardy\'s first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher and Hardy destroyed the manuscript so only parts of the novel remain. He was encouraged to try again by his mentor and friend, Victorian poet and novelist George Meredith. Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) were published anonymously. In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, a novel drawing on Hardy\'s courtship of his first wife, was published under his own name. The term \'cliffhanger\' is considered to have originated with the serialized version of this story in which Henry Knight, one of the protagonists, is left literally hanging off a cliff.
 

Hardy said that he first introduced Wessex in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), his next novel. It was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next 25 years Hardy produced 10 more novels.

Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with even stronger negative outcries from the Victorian public for its frank treatment of sex, and was often referred to as \'Jude the Obscene\'. Heavily criticised for its apparent attack on the institution of marriage through the presentation of such concepts as erotolepsy, the book caused further strain on Hardy\'s already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical.

Despite this criticism, Hardy had become a celebrity in English literature by the 1900s, with several highly successful novels behind him, yet he felt disgust at the public reception of two of his greatest works and gave up writing fiction altogether. Other novels written by Hardy include Two on a Tower, a romance story set in the world of Astronomy.

Literary themes
Hardy was a Victorian Realist writer, as he constantly examined the social constraints that hinder the quality of lives of all involved and ultimately lead to unhappiness. In Two on a Tower, Hardy seeks to take a stand against these rules and sets up a story against the backdrop of social structure by creating a story of love that crosses the boundaries of class. The reader is forced to consider disposing of the conventions set up for love.

Poetry
In 1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry,  Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. Hardy claimed poetry as his first love, and after a great amount of negative criticism erupted after the publication of his novel Jude The Obscure, Hardy decided to give up writing novels permanently and to focus his literary efforts on writing poems. After giving up the novel form, Hardy continued to publish poetry collections until his death in 1928. Although he did publish one last novel in 1897, that novel, The Well-Beloved, had actually been written prior to Jude the Obscure.

Although his poems were not initially as well received by his contemporaries as his novels were, Hardy is now recognized as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. His verse had a profound influence on later writers.

Most of his poems such as Neutral Tones and A Broken Appointment deal with themes of disappointment in love and life (which were also prominent themes in his novels), and mankind\'s long struggle against indifference to human suffering. Using stylistic patterns similar to those that he used in his novels, Hardy sometimes wrote ironic poems, like Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave, in which he employed twist endings in the last few lines or in the last stanza to convey that irony. His compositions range in style from the three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts to shorter poems such as A Broken Appointment.

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