Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in a thatched-roof cottage
in upper Bockhampton, Dorset, England, a prophetic birthplace that
lay in the center of 'Wessex,' the fictional region of southwest
England which would serve as the backdrop for his novels. The
eldest son of a prosperous builder and stonemason, Hardy was
educated at the village school and apprenticed at the age of
sixteen to local architect and church restorer John Hicks. In 1862
he went to London to pursue his architectural career; he also began
writing at this time. Hardy returned to Dorset in 1867 to become
assistant to John Hicks and wrote his first novel, The Poor Man and
the Lady, of which only fragments remain. Although George Meredith,
who was reader for Chapman & Hall publishers, advised against its
publication, he encouraged Hardy to keep writing, preferably a
story with a more complicated plot. Over the next several years he
produced three more novels- Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the
Greenwood Tree (1872) were published anonymously, but A Pair of
Blue Eyes (1873) bore the author's name.
In November 1872, Leslie Stephen, the distinguished critic and
editor, wrote to Hardy inviting him to contribute a novel for
serialization in the Cornhill Magazine, a prestigious monthly that
had published the work of such established writers as Anthony
Trollope. Hardy accepted and in his letter to Stephen added that
'the chief characters would probably be a young woman-farmer, a
shepherd, and a sergeant of cavalry.' He wrote Far from the Madding
Crowd both in and out of doors at Bockhamptom as if possessed.
'Occasionally without a scrap of paper at the very moment when I
felt volumes . . . I would use large dead leaves, white chips left
by the woodcutters, or pieces of stone or slate that came to hand,'
Hardy later recalled. Published anonymously in 1874, Far from the
Madding Crowd sold out in just over two months and marked the
turning point in Hardy's literary career. As Virginia Woolf later
noted- 'The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and
the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man
of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which, however fashions
may chop and change, must hold its place among the great English
novels.'
The success of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1874 encouraged Hardy
to abandon architecture and devote himself entirely to the craft of
fiction. His next novel, The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), also
appeared in the Cornhill Magazine but did not repeat the success of
its predecessor. In 1874 Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford, and
the couple soon settled in an idyllic cottage overlooking the
Dorset Stour, at Sturminster Newton, where Hardy wrote The Return
of the Native (1878). In 1878 he moved to London. Although he
became a well-known figure in literary circles and was considered a
catch for hostesses, Hardy wrote three disappointing 'minor' novels
during his years there- The Trumpet-Major (1880), A Laodicean
(1881), and Two on a Tower (1882). This fallow period in his career
seemed to lift in 1885 with his return to Dorset to live at Max
Gate. Over the next three years he published The Mayor of
Casterbridge (1886), which many regard as his greatest tragic
novel, The Woodlanders (1887), and his first collection of short
stories, Wessex Tales (1888). In 1891 Tess of the d'Urbervilles
appeared, and in 1895 Hardy's final novel, Jude the Obscure, came
out. The book sent shock waves of indignation rolling across
Victorian England. It was denounced as pornography and subjected
the author to an avalanche of abuse. Hardy's disgust at the
public's reaction led him to announce in 1896 that he would never
again write fiction.
During the remaining years of his life, Hardy devoted himself to
poetry, publishing his first book of verse, Wessex Poems, in 1898.
A second collection, Poems of the Past and Present, appeared in
1901. Over the next five years Hardy wrote The Dynasts, an epic
drama about the Napoleonic War. In 1912 he made a final revision of
his novels for the authoritative Wessex Editions. Hardy's wife died
suddenly the same year. In February 1914 he married his longtime
secretary, Florence Emily Dugdale. Over the next decade Hardy
continued to write poetry and to work on his autobiography, The
Early Life of Thomas Hardy, which was supposedly authored by his
second wife and published posthumously. Thomas Hardy died in Dorset
on January 11, 1928. His heart was buried in the Wessex countryside
in the parish churchyard at Stinsford; his ashes were placed next
to those of Charles Dickens in the Poets' Corner of Westminster
Abbey.
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