Thomas Hardy Quick Facts

Thomas Hardy

English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement.

Profile

Full Name: Thomas Hardy
AKA: Thomas Masterson Hardy
Date of Birth: June 2, 1840
Place of Birth: Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign: Gemini
Death: January 11, 1928
Place of Death: Dorchester, Dorset, United Kingdom
Cause of Death: Unknown
Ethnicity: White
Religion: Anglican
Nationality: British
Place of Burial:

1. Heart- Stinsford parish church

2. Ashes- Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey

Father: Thomas Hardy (1811-1892)
Mother: Jemima Hardy (née Hand) (1813-1904)
Siblings:

1. Sister- Mary Hardy (1841-1915)

2. Brother- Henry Hardy (1851-1928)

3. Sister- Kate Hardy (1856-1940)

Spouses:

1. Emma Lavinia Gifford (b. 1840–d. 1912; m. 1874, until her death)

2. Florence Dugdale (b.1879–d. 1937; m. 1914, until his death)

Children: None
Alma Mater: Mr. Last's Academy, King's College London
Known for: his contribution in the naturalist movement
Criticized for: his frank treatment of sexuality as well as his empathetic treatment of a fallen woman in Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891)
Influences: William Shakespeare (1564–1616), John Milton (1608–1674), Thomas Gray (1716 –1771), Charles Dickens (1812–1870), William Wordsworth (1770 –1850), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 –1860), William Barnes (1801-1866), Charles Darwin (1809 –1882), Charlotte Brontë (1816 –1855), Emily Brontë (1818 –1848), George Meredith (1828–1909), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Influenced: Robert Frost (1874 –1963), Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917), Ezra Pound (1885 –1972), D.H. Lawrence (1885 –1930), Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

Quotes

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.” Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Major Themes

Human misery
Alienation/ Loneliness
Uncaring universe
Chance/Fate
Disappointment
Love
Nature
War

Notable Works

Novels

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 Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid (1883)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891)
The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892)
Jude the Obscure (1895)

Short Story

Wessex Tales

The Three Strangers (1883)
A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four (1882)
The Melancholy Hussar of The German Legion (1890)
The Withered Arm (1888)
Fellow-Townsmen (1880)
Interlopers At The Knap (1884)
The Distracted Preacher (1879)

Life's Little Ironies

An Imaginative Woman (1894)
The Son's Veto (1891)
For Conscience' Sake (1891)
A Tragedy Of Two Ambitions (1888)
On The Western Circuit (1891)
To Please His Wife (1891)
The Fiddler of the Reels (1893)
A Few Crusted Characters (1891)

-Introduction

-Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver

-The History of the Hardcomes

-The Superstitious Man's Story

-Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk

-Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician

-Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir

-The Winters And The Palmleys

-Incident in the Life of Mr. George Crookhill

-Netty Sargent's Copyhold

A Group of Noble Dames (1891)

The First Countess of Wessex (1889)
Barbara Of The House Of Grebe (1890)
The Marchioness of Stonehenge (1890)
Lady Mottisfont (1890)
The Lady Icenway (1890)
Squire Petrick's Lady (1890)
Anna, Lady Baxby (1890)
The Lady Penelope (1890)
The Duchess of Hamptonshire (1878)
The Honourable Laura (1881)

A Changed Man

A Changed Man (1900)
The Waiting Supper (1887-1888)
Alicia's Diary (1887)
The Grave By The Handpost (1897)
Enter a Dragoon (1900)
A Tryst At An Ancient Earthwork (1885)
What The Shepherd Saw (1881)
A Committee-Man of 'The Terror' (1896)
Master John Horseleigh, Knight (1893)
The Duke's Reappearance (1896)
A Mere Interlude (1885)
The Romantic Adventures Of A Milkmaid (1883)

Excluded and Collaborative Stories

How I Built Myself A House (1865)
Destiny and a Blue Cloak (1874)
The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing (1877)
Our Exploits At West Poley (1892-1893)
Old Mrs. Chundle (1929)
The Doctor's Legend (1891)
The Spectre of the Real (1894)
Blue Jimmy: The Horse Stealer (1911)
The Unconquerable (1992)

Poems

(As sung by Mr. Charles Charrington in the play of The Three Wayfarers)
(Greek Title)
A Broken Appointment
A Christmas Ghost Story
A Commonplace Day
A Confession To A Friend In Trouble
A Man (In Memory of H. of M.)
A Meeting With Despair
A Sign-Seeker
A Spot
A Thunderstorm In Town
A Wasted Illness
A Wife In London
Additions
After Schiller
Afterwards
Ah Are You Digging On My Grave?
Amabel
An Ancient To Ancients
An August Midnight
An Autumn Rain-Scene
Architectural Masks
At A Bridal
At a Hasty Wedding
At a Lunar Eclipse
At An Inn
At Castle Boterel
At Lulworth Cove A Century Back
At The Railway Station Upways
At the War Office London
Beeny Cliff
Between Us Now
Between Us Now
Birds at Winter Nightfall (Triolet)
By the Earths Corpse
Cardinal Bembos Epitaph on Raphael
Catullus: XXXI
Channel Firing
De Profundis
Departure
Ditty
Domicilium
Doom and She
Drummer Hodge
During Wind And Rain
Embarcation
Epitaph On A Pessimist
Fragment
Friends Beyond
From Victor Hugo
Genoa and the Mediterranean
George Meredith
God-Forgotten
Gods Funeral
Hap
He Never Expected Much
Heiress And Architect
Her Death And After
Her Dilemma
Her Immortality
Her Initals
Her Late Husband (Kings-Hintock 182-.)
Her Reproach
Heredity
His Immortality
How Great My Grief (Triolet)
I Have Lived With Shades
I Have Lived With Shades
I Look Into My Glass
I Need Not Go
I Said To Love
I Said to Love
In A Eweleaze Near Weatherbury
In A Museum
In a Wood
In Tenebris
In The Moonlight
In The Old Theatre Fiesole
In The Vaulted Way
In Time Of The Breaking Of Nations
In Vision I Roamed
Last Words To A Dumb Friend
Lausanne In Gibbons Old Garden: 11-12 p.m
Leipzig
Let Me Enjoy
Lines On The Loss Of The Titanic
Long Plighted
Mad Judy
Men Who March Away
Middle-Age Enthusiasms
Midnight On The Great Western
Mismet
Moments Of Vision
Mute Opinion
My Cicely
My Spirit Will Not Haunt The Mound
Natures Questioning
Neutral Tones
Night In The Old Home
No Buyers
On a Fine Morning
On an Invitation to the United States
Postponement
Revulsion
Rom: On the Palatine
Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats
Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter
Rome: On the Palatine
Rome: The Vatican-Sala Delle Muse
San Sebastian
Sapphic Fragment
Satires of Circumstance in Fifteen Glimpses VIII: In the St
She At His Funeral
She Hears The Storm
She To Him
She to Him I
She to Him II
She To Him III
She To Him IV
Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)
Song From Heine
Song of Hope
Song of the Soldiers Wifes
Tesss Lament
The Alarm
The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknown God
The Bridge of Lodi
The Bullfinches
The Burghers
The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again (Villanelle)
The Casterbridge Captains
The Cave Of The Unborn
The Choirmasters Burial
The Church-Builder
The Colonels Solilquy
The Comet at Valbury or Yellham
The Contretemps
The Convergence Of The Twain
The Coquette and After (Triolets)
The Dame of Athelhall
The Dance At The Phoenix
The Darkling Thrush
The Dead Drummer
The Dead Man Walking
The Dream-Follower
The Fallow Deer At The Lonely House
The Farm Womans Winter
The Fire At Tranter Sweatleys
The Ghost Of The Past
The Going
The Going of the Battery Wives. (Lament)
The House Of Hospitalities
The Impercipient
The Inconsistent
The Ivy-Wife
The Kings Experiment
The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape Waddon Vale
The Last Chrysanthemum
The Levelled Churchyard
The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend
The Man He Killed
The Masked Face
The Milkmaid
The Mother Mourns
The Oxen
The Peasants Confession
The Phantom Horsewoman
The Pity Of It
The Puzzled Game-Birds
The Rambler
The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism
The Roman Road
The Ruined Maid
The Seasons of Her Year
The Selfsame Song
The Self-Unseeing
The Sergeants Song
The Sick God
The Sleep-Worker
The Slow Nature
The Souls of the Slain
The Subalterns
The Sun On The Bookcase
The Superseded
The Supplanter: A Tale
The Temporary The All
The Tenant-For-Life
The To-Be-Forgotten
The Tree: An Old Mans Story
The Two Men
The Voice
The Well-Beloved
The Widow
The Years Awakening
Then And Now
Thought Of Ph---a At News Of Her Death
Thoughts Of Phena
To A Lady
To An Orphan Child
To An Unborn Pauper Child
To Flowers From Italy in Winter
To Life
To Lizbie Browne
To Outer Nature
Transformations
Under The Waterfall
Unknowing
V.R. 1819-1901 (A Reverie.)
Valenciennes
Waiting Both
Weathers
When I Set Out For Lyonnesse
Winter in Durnover Field
Wives in the Sere
Zermatt to the Matterhorn

Did You Know?

Hardy was the eldest of the four children of Thomas Hardy and Jemima Hardy.
His father, Thomas was a self-employed master mason and building contractor.
Hardy’s mother, Jemima was a former maidservant and cook.
His mother’s love for reading inspired him to grow interest in literature.
He was also very fond of reading romances and his favourite authors include William Harrison Ainsworth, Walter Scott, and Alexander Dumas.
Hardy received his initial education from his mother at home until the age of eight when he went to school for the first time. After schooling he became an apprentice in 1856 to a local architect, John Hicks. He worked there with a specialization in the restoration of Churches until 1862.
In April 1862, Hardy decided to suspend his architectural apprenticeship and left for London to study architecture at King's College. Despite achieving a prize-winning performance in studies, he decided to take writing as a career.
Hardy's experience from architectural apprenticeship is evident in many of his poetry and fiction. For instance, the character of Jude in Jude the Obscure (1895), is a stonemason.
Before moving to London he proposed and been rejected by a Dorchester girl, Mary Waight, who was older than him.
In 1870, Hardy met Emma Lavinia Gifford. Although the couple deeply fell in love with each other, they married after four years. But surprisingly, none of Hardy’s family attended the wedding ceremony.
The first years of their marriage were quite happy. The couple spent their honeymoon in Paris and travelled a lot. However, in later years Emma felt more and more isolated from her husband, and got mentally unstable, which culminated into her sudden death in 27th November 1912.
Emma kept a secret private diary in which she recorded her remarks and her complaints about her husband. Moreover, she also discussed various sides of their marriage with a few acquaintances.
Emma’s death put Hardy into complete dismay but at same time inspired him to write a number of poems which recalled his happy time with Emma when they were young.
On 6 February 1914, he married Florence Dugdale, who was almost forty years younger than him. Sadly, his second marriage also proved to be unhappy, because Hardy preferred spending much time in study rather than with Florence. Consequently, like Emma she also felt lonely most of the time.
Hardy did not have any children with either of his wives.
In March 1865 his first short story was published in Chambers's Journal.
When his novel Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) appeared anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine, many attributed it to George Eliot.
Hardy anonymously published two of his early novels, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872).
Due to unconventional presentation of women the publication of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) created a public uproar. Disturbed by the public reaction Hardly decided to stop writing prose fictions.
Much of his works are set in the fictional region of Wessex, which is mostly inspired by Dorset, his birthplace.
Hardy's first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems was published in 1898.
In December 1927, Hardy fell sick with pleurisy and eventually died in January 1928. After the funeral on 16 January, his heart was buried with his first wife Emma and ashes in Poet's Corner.

Media Gallery

References

“Thomas Hardy.” Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 April 2016

< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy>.

“Thomas Hardy. A Biographical Sketch.” The Victorian Web. 2016. The Victorian Web. 15 April 2016

< http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/bio.html>.

“Thomas Hardy.” NNDB. 2014. Soylent Communications. 15 April 2016

< http://www.nndb.com/people/978/000084726/>.

“Thomas Hardy.” The Famous People. 2016. Famous People. 15 April 2016

< http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/thomas-hardy-32.php>.

“Hardy's Impact on Modern Poetry.” Gettysburg College. 2016. Gettysburg. 15 April 2016

< http://public.gettysburg.edu/academics/english/hardy/poetry/modernimpact.html>.

NB: This article was last updated on January 09, 2018

Tanvir Shameem

Tanvir Shameem is not the biggest fan of teaching, but he is doing his best to write on various topics of language and literature just to guide thousands of students and researchers across the globe. You can always find him experimenting with presentation, style and diction. He will contribute as long as time permits. You can find him on:

Tanvir's Blog

April 21, 2016