(born June 2, 1840, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, Eng.—died Jan. 11, 1928, Dorchester, Dorset) British novelist and poet. Son of a country stonemason and builder, he practiced architecture before beginning to write poetry, then prose. Many of his novels, beginning with his second,
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), are set in the imaginary county of Wessex.
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), his first success, was followed by
The Return of the Native (1878),
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886),
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and
Jude the Obscure (1895), all expressing his stoical pessimism and his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life. Their continuing popularity (many have been filmed) owes much to their richly varied yet accessible style and their combination of romantic plots with convincingly presented characters. Hardy's works were increasingly at odds with Victorian morality, and public indignation at
Jude so disgusted him that he wrote no more novels. He returned to poetry with
Wessex Poems (1898),
Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), and
The Dynasts (1910), a huge poetic drama of the Napoleonic Wars.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
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