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Thomas Hardy: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy was born on the 2nd of June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, a quiet hamlet in the parish of Stinsford, Dorset, to a father who worked as a stonemason and a mother who was well-read and educated him until he was eight. His early life was defined by the physical world of stone and mortar, as his father Thomas worked on local buildings and the family lacked the means for a university education. This lack of formal academic opportunity led to his apprenticeship at the age of sixteen with James Hicks, a local architect, where he learned the trade that would eventually take him to London. While working on the design of the new church at nearby Athelhampton, he painted a watercolour of the Tudor gatehouse, a testament to his early artistic sensibilities. He moved to London in 1862 to study at King's College London, winning prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects, yet he never felt at home in the city, acutely conscious of the class divisions and his own feelings of social inferiority. It was during these five years in London that he became interested in social reform and the works of John Stuart Mill, finding solace in Mill's essay On Liberty, which he later declared cured his despair. After five years, concerned about his health, he returned to Dorset, settling in Weymouth, and decided to dedicate himself to writing, leaving behind the architectural career that had once seemed his only path.
The Architect Of Wessex
Hardy's transition from architecture to literature was not immediate, but it was driven by a series of personal and professional turning points that reshaped his life. In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall, he met and fell in love with Emma Gifford, whom he married on the 17th of September 1874, at St Peter's Church in Paddington, London. The couple rented St David's Villa in Southborough for a year before moving to Max Gate in 1885, a house designed by Hardy and built by his brother, which became his home for the rest of his life. His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher and was subsequently destroyed, but he used some of its ideas in later work. He then wrote two new novels, Desperate Remedies and Under the Greenwood Tree, both published anonymously, and it was while working on the latter that he met Emma Gifford. In 1873, A Pair of Blue Eyes, a novel drawing on his courtship of Emma, was published under his own name, introducing the term cliffhanger to the literary world through its serialised version. Far from the Madding Crowd, published in 1874, was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career, introducing the idea of calling the region in the west of England, where his novels are set, Wessex. Over the next 25 years, Hardy produced 10 more novels, moving from London to Yeovil, then to Sturminster Newton, and finally to Wimborne, before settling at Max Gate, where he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
When was Thomas Hardy born and where did he grow up?
Thomas Hardy was born on the 2nd of June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, a quiet hamlet in the parish of Stinsford, Dorset. His early life was defined by the physical world of stone and mortar as his father worked as a stonemason on local buildings.
What year did Thomas Hardy die and where is he buried?
Thomas Hardy died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on the 11th of January 1928. His funeral was on the 16th of January at Westminster Abbey, where his ashes were placed in Poets' Corner while his heart was buried at Stinsford with his first wife Emma.
Which novel by Thomas Hardy caused the most controversy and when was it published?
Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, was the last novel written by Hardy and was met with a strong negative response from the Victorian public. The novel was criticized for its controversial treatment of sex, religion, and marriage, and some booksellers sold it in brown paper bags.
How many novels did Thomas Hardy write and what is the name of the region they are set in?
Thomas Hardy wrote 14 novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. These novels are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex, which eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, and much of Berkshire.
Who was Thomas Hardy's first wife and when did she die?
Thomas Hardy's first wife was Emma Gifford, whom he married on the 17th of September 1874 at St Peter's Church in Paddington, London. Emma died in 1912, and her death had a traumatic effect on Hardy, leading him to write the collection Poems 1912, 13.
What was the cause of Thomas Hardy's death and what was his final work?
The cause of death cited on Thomas Hardy's death certificate was cardiac syncope, with old age given as a contributory factor. He dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed before passing away at Max Gate on the 11th of January 1928.
While Hardy gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure, he regarded himself primarily as a poet, and his first collection of poetry, Wessex Poems, was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels, but during his lifetime, his poetry was acclaimed by younger poets, particularly the Georgians, who viewed him as a mentor. After his death, his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, and Philip Larkin, who included 27 poems by Hardy in his edition of The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, compared with only nine by T. S. Eliot. Hardy wrote in a great variety of poetic forms, including lyrics, ballads, satire, dramatic monologues, and dialogue, as well as a three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts, which allowed him to explore what he had noticed about human beings over the most ambitious canvas that he had ever attempted. He wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both the Boer Wars and World War I, including Drummer Hodge, In Time of The Breaking of Nations, and The Man He Killed, using the viewpoint of ordinary soldiers and their colloquial speech. Some of his more famous poems are from Poems 1912, 13, which later became part of Satires of Circumstance, written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. These lyric poems express deeply felt regret and remorse, and are by general consent regarded as the peak of his poetic achievement. Hardy's poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and the perversity of fate, presenting these themes with a carefully controlled elegiac feeling. Irony is an important element in a number of Hardy's poems, including The Man He Killed and Are You Digging on My Grave, and a few of his poems, such as The Blinded Bird, reflect his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and his membership in the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The Marriage Of Regret
In 1885, Hardy and Emma moved to Max Gate, a house outside Dorchester designed by Hardy and built by his brother, but over time the couple became estranged, and Emma's death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him. Hardy made a trip to Cornwall after her death to revisit places linked with their courtship, and his Poems 1912, 13 reflect upon her death, expressing deeply felt regret and remorse. He remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry, which became the peak of his poetic achievement. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior, and in his later years, he kept a Wire Fox Terrier named Wessex, who was notoriously ill-tempered. His grave stone can be found on the Max Gate grounds, and his estate at death was valued at £95,418. Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors of his estate burnt his letters and notebooks, but 12 notebooks survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of newspaper stories from the 1820s, and research into these has provided insight into how Hardy used them in his works. The opening chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge, written in 1886, was based on press reports of wife-selling. In the year of his death, Mrs Hardy published The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1841, 1891, compiled largely from contemporary notes, letters, diaries and biographical memoranda, as well as from oral information in conversations extending over many years. Hardy's work was admired by many younger writers, including D. H. Lawrence, John Cowper Powys, and Virginia Woolf, and Robert Graves recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s and how Hardy received him and his new wife warmly, and was encouraging about his work.
The Reluctant Novelist
Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, was the last novel written by Hardy, and it was met with an even stronger negative response from the Victorian public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion, and marriage. Its apparent attack on the institution of marriage caused strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, and Walsham How, the Bishop of Wakefield, is reputed to have burnt his copy. In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident as part of the career of the book, saying, After these hostile verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop , probably in his despair at not being able to burn me. Despite this, Hardy had become a celebrity by the 1900s, but some argue that he gave up writing novels because of the criticism of both Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. However, in a March 1928 piece in the Bookman that posthumously printed interviews with Hardy, he is quoted as saying that, in addition to the negative publicity, he chose to stop writing novels because I never cared very much about writing novels and I had written quite enough novels. The Well-Beloved, first serialised in 1892 and written before Jude the Obscure, was the last of Hardy's fourteen novels to be published, in 1897. Hardy's novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex, initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, which eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, and much of Berkshire, in south-west and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey of best-loved novels, The Big Read.
The War And The Will
Hardy's religious beliefs were complex and often debated, as he frequently conceived of, and wrote about, supernatural forces, particularly those that control the universe through indifference or caprice, a force he called The Immanent Will. He also showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits, yet he retained a strong emotional attachment to the Christian liturgy and church rituals, particularly as manifested in rural communities, that had been such a formative influence in his early years, and Biblical references can be found woven throughout many of his novels. Throughout his life, Hardy sought a rationale for believing in an afterlife or a timeless existence, turning first to spiritualists, such as Henri Bergson, and then to Albert Einstein and J. M. E. McTaggart, considering their philosophy on time and space in relation to immortality. In 1914, Hardy was one of 53 leading British authors, including H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who signed their names to the Authors' Declaration, justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War. This manifesto declared that the German invasion of Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war. Hardy was horrified by the destruction caused by the war, pondering that I do not think a world in which such fiendishness is possible to be worth the saving and better to let western civilization perish, and let the black and yellow races have a chance. He wrote to John Galsworthy that the exchange of international thought is the only possible salvation for the world. Shortly after helping to excavate the Fordington mosaic, Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on the 11th of January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed. The cause of death was cited, on his death certificate, as cardiac syncope, with old age given as a contributory factor. His funeral was on the 16th of January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford church in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. His family and friends concurred, however, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.
The Legacy Of Stone
Hardy's influence on later writers was profound, as his work was admired by many younger writers, including D. H. Lawrence, John Cowper Powys, and Virginia Woolf. D. H. Lawrence's Study of Thomas Hardy, first published in 1936, indicates the importance of Hardy for him, even though this work is a platform for Lawrence's own developing philosophy rather than a more standard literary study. The influence of Hardy's treatment of character, and Lawrence's own response to the central metaphysic behind many of Hardy's novels, helped significantly in the development of The Rainbow and Women in Love. Wood and Stone, the first novel by John Cowper Powys, who was a contemporary of Lawrence, was Dedicate with devoted admiration to the greatest poet and novelist of our age Thomas Hardy. Powys's later novel Maiden Castle, set in Dorchester, which was Hardy's Casterbridge, was intended by Powys to be a rival to Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. Hardy was clearly the starting point for the character of the novelist Edward Driffield in W. Somerset Maugham's novel Cakes and Ale. Thomas Hardy's works also feature prominently in the American playwright Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo, in which a graduate thesis analysing Tess of the d'Urbervilles is interspersed with analysis of Matt's family's neuroses. Hardy has been a significant influence on Nigel Blackwell, frontman of the post-punk British rock band Half Man Half Biscuit, who has often incorporated phrases by or about Hardy into his song lyrics. A number of notable English composers, including Gerald Finzi, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Gustav Holst, set poems by Hardy to music, and others include Holst's daughter Imogen Holst, John Ireland, Muriel Herbert, Ivor Gurney, and Robin Milford. Orchestral tone poems which evoke the landscape of Hardy's novels include Ireland's Mai-Dun and Holst's Egdon Heath: A Homage to Thomas Hardy. Hardy's birthplace in Bockhampton and his house Max Gate, both in Dorchester, are owned by the National Trust, and the Dorset Museum, Dorchester, contains the largest Hardy collections in the world, donated directly to the Museum by the Hardy family and inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register for the United Kingdom.