Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, a hamlet near Dorchester in Dorset, England, the son of a stonemason and builder. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a local architect; in 1862 he moved to London to work as an architect's assistant. While working on the restoration of a church in Cornwall in 1870, he met Emma Gifford, whom he married in 1874. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) was his first great success and allowed him to give up architecture. His novels are set in 'Wessex', a fictional version of south-western England based closely on real places, and often show people struggling against fate and the rules of society. They include The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Jude, harshly criticised, was his last novel, and he devoted the rest of his life to poetry. He lived at Max Gate, a house he designed in Dorchester. After Emma's death in 1912 he married Florence Dugdale in 1914. He died in 1928.

Thomas Hardy is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised in a not especially devout Anglican family; he came to question the traditional Christian view of God. Source: Wikipedia