Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper Bockhampton, located in Southwestern England, the eldest son of Thomas Hardy and Jemima Hardy.

His father was a stone mason and violinist. His father also worked as a builder. His mother enjoyed reading and relating all the folk songs and legends of the region.

Between his parents, Hardy gained all the interests that would appear in his novels and his own life: his love for music and architecture.

Jemima was well-read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at the age of 8.

For several years he attended Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester, where he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential.

Because Hardy's family didn’t have enough money for a university education, his formal education ended at the age of sixteen.

Hardy helped his father with the architectural drawings for a restoration of Woodsford Castle. The owner, architect James Hicks, was impressed by the younger Hardy's work, and took him on as an apprentice.

Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester before moving to London in 1862; there he enrolled as a student at King's College London.

He won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association.

He joined Arthur Blomfield's practice as assistant architect in April 1862 and worked with Blomfield on All Saints' parish church in Windsor in 1862–64.

He began writing, but his poems were rejected by a number of publishers. He kept many of the poems and published them in 1898 and afterward.

Although he enjoyed life in London, Hardy's health was poor, and he was forced to return to Dorset and decided to dedicate himself to writing.

Back in Dorchester in 1867 while working for Hicks, he wrote a novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, which he was advised not to publish because it was too critical of Victorian society.

Told to write a novel with a plot, he turned out Desperate Remedies (1871), which was unsuccessful.

Meanwhile Hardy had begun to work for Gerald Crickmay. Crickmay sent Hardy to Cornwall, England, where on March 7, 1870, he met Emma Lavinia Gifford, with whom he fell in love.

Hardy could have kept on with architecture, but he was a "born bookworm," as he said, and in spite of his lack of success with literature he decided to continue writing, hoping eventually to make enough money so he could marry Gifford.

For Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) he earned 30 pounds and the book was well received.

At the same time he was asked to write a novel for serialization in a magazine.

In September 1872 A Pair of Blue Eyes began to appear, even though only a few chapters had been completed.

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), was published in magazines and was a success both financially and critically.

Finally making a living from literature, Hardy married Gifford in September of 1874.

Hardy preferred his poetry to his prose and thought his novels merely a way to earn a living. But his best novels – The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) – were much more than magazine fiction.

The people were dominated by the countryside of "Wessex," Hardy's name for the area in southwest England where he set most of his novels, and the area is as memorable as the people.

Good or bad, Hardy's novels brought him money, fame, and acquaintance with greatness. With his wife he travelled in Germany, France, and Italy; he built Max Gate near Dorchester, where he lived from 1886 until his death;

It was a successful life and seemed happy enough, but he had a strained relationship with his wife.

Collecting new and old poems, Hardy published Wessex Poems (1898) and Poems of the Past and Present (1902).

Then he began to publish The Dynasts, an immense drama of the Napoleonic Wars (a series of wars from 1792 to 1815 between France and different European powers) which depicts all the characters, even French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), as a puppet whose actions are determined by the Immanent Will. The "epic-drama" meant to be read, not acted, is frequently called Hardy's masterwork.

Meanwhile Hardy continued to publish his shorter verse in Time's Laughingstocks (1909). His most famous single volume of poems, Satires of Circumstance, appeared in 1914.

Selected Poems (1916), Moments of Vision (1917), Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922), and Human Shows (1925) were published during the remainder of his life.

Winter Words (1928) was published after his death.

His wife’s subsequent death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him and after her death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship; his poems 1912–13 reflect upon her death.

In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. However, he remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry.

In 1910, Hardy had been appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was also for the first time nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He would be nominated again for the prize 11 years later.

Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928 at his house of Max Gate in Dorchester.

He had expressed the wish to be buried beside Emma, but his wishes were only partly regarded; his body was interred in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, and only his heart was buried in Emma's grave at Stinsford.