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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

LINKS

http://65.107.211.206/authors/hardy/hardyov.html

This link connects you to the Victorian Web entry on Thomas Hardy. Here you will find an extensive archive of primary and secondary works covering Hardy's writings in terms of major themes and patterns of imagery, as well as the political contexts, social movements, and intellectual backgrounds defining the poet's era.

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=111

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on Thomas Hardy including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in the rural village of Higher Bockhampton in Dorset, Thomas Hardy was the son of a stonemason. Early on, his mother encouraged his reading, and at age 16 he apprenticed to study architecture, later traveling to London to pursue that trade at 22. Although he considered taking Holy Orders, in London he gradually adopted a more modern skepticism toward religion owing, in part, to his reading of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill. Hardy began life as a writer by returning to Dorchester in 1867, where he worked on an unpublished novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. In the 1870 he emerged as a novelist with a popular following for such works of fiction as Desperate Remedies (1871), Under the Greenwood Tree (1972), A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Following on this successful run of fiction, he entered a difficult marriage to Emma Gifford. His troubles with Gifford are apparent in the increasing pessimism of his themes from The Return of the Native (1878), followed by The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). The latter two, in particular, were so harshly criticized by Hardy's contemporaries that he gave up fiction and turned to writing poetry, producing such notable volumes as Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Poems of the Past and Present (1902), and Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries (1914). Following the death of wife Emily in 1912, Hardy remarried to Florence Dugdale two years later. The many honors bestowed on Hardy during the final years of his life included the Order of Merit awarded by King George V, the presidency of the Society of Authors, a Nobel Prize nomination, the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, and numerous honorary degrees. Hardy died in his native Dorchester in 1928 and his ashes were buried in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Armstrong, Tim. Haunted Hardy: Poetry, History, Memory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Green, Brian. Hardy's Lyrics: Pearls of Pity. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Kramer, Dale, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Mallett, Phillip, Ed. The Achievement of Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Neill, Edward. Trial by Ordeal: Thomas Hardy and the Critics. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999.

Page, Norman. Thomas Hardy: The Novels. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Petit, Charles, P.C. Ed. Reading Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Turner, Paul. The Life of Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER