Thomas Hardy

(June 2nd, 1840 — January 11th, 1928)

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. Hardy was a Victorian Realist, and was highly critical of Victorian society and the declining status of rural people in Britain. He was heavily influenced by the Romantic movement.

Though he is and was primarily known as a novelist, Hardy considered himself to be primarily a poet. His poems have been praised by later poets, such as Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.

Hardy’s novels are often tragic or fatalistic in theme, featuring characters struggling against desire and social conditions, and they are set in a semi-fiction version of Wessex. Hardy’s Wessex synthesizes much of the south of England.

Thomas Hardy is a book author.

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Jude the Obscure


Victorian Era

This book got mixed reviews when it was published, one going so far as to call it ‘obscene’. What was obscene about it was the discussion of themes and aspects of Victorian life that Victorians were in no way comfortable discussing — including the struggles of the lower classes and their exclusion from even the dream of higher education, the lack of class mobility, sex, sexism, animal cruelty, the destructive power of gossip, bad marriages, and horrible people. This is a review of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.