Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Thomas
Hardy (1840-1928) was born near Dorchester, in southeastern England
(on which
he based the "Wessex" of many of his novels and poems). Hardy
worked
for the ecclesiastical architect John Hicks from 1856 to 1861. He then
moved
to London to practice architecture, and took evening classes at King's
College
for six years.
In 1867,
he gave up architecture to become a full-time writer, and after writing
short
stories and poems found success as a novelist. The Mayor of Casterbridge
(1886)
and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) reveal Hardy's concern for victims
of circumstance
and his appeal to humanitarian sympathy in readers. After his
novel
Jude the Obscure (1896) was strongly criticized, Hardy set aside prose
fiction
and returned to poetry, a genre in which he was most prolific and
successful
after he reached the age of seventy.
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