THOMAS HARDY

BIOGRAPHY

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn’t there.

Thomas Hardy

One of the great English novelist, poet, playwright, short story writer, and essayists of the late nineteenth century Thomas Hardy was born in the village of Bockhampton located in Southwestern England on June 2, 1840. . His father was a stone-mason and a violinist. His mother enjoyed reading and retelling folk songs. From his family, Hardy gained the interests that would influence his life and appear in his novels, architecture and music, the lifestyles of the country folk, and literature itself.

His mother was well-read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at age eight. However, most of his education came from the books he found in Dorchester, the nearby town. He taught himself French, German, and Latin. At the age of sixteen Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester. At age twenty-two, Hardy went to London to pursue his architectural training. But Hardy never felt at home in London, because he was acutely conscious of class divisions and his social inferiority. Five years later, concerned about his health, he returned to Dorset, and decided to dedicate himself to writing. In 1870 Hardy met and fell in love with Emma, whom he married in 1874.

Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England, and criticizes those beliefs, especially those relating to marriage, education and religion, that limited people's lives and caused unhappiness. Hardy first politically controversial novel The Poor Man And The Lady in 1868 was failed to find a publisher. But his new next two novels Wessex tales and Far from the Madding Crowd about an early saxon kingdom were  successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next twenty-five years Hardy produced ten more novels. Two on the tower, the return of the native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are his famous novels.

Fate or chance is another important theme of his work. In 1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years.  While some suggest that Hardy gave up writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, the poet C. H. Sisson calls this "hypothesis" "superficial and absurd". In the twentieth century Hardy only published poetry. Thomas 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 (1904-8), and though in some ways a very traditional poet, because he was influenced by folksong and ballads. Hardy’s work has a great influence on other writers and poets such as D. H. Lawrence's Study of Thomas Hardy (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.

His first wife’s death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him and after her death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship, and his Poems 1912–13 reflect upon her death. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. However, he remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry. Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died at Max Gate  11 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 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy and his family and friends had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. 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.

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