Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens was another important influence.
He died in at Max Gate, a house he built for himself and his first wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, in Dorchester, a few miles from his birthplace. Though he was an architectural apprentice in London, and spent time there each year until his late 70s, Dorset provided Hardy with material for his fiction and poetry.
One of the poorest and most backward of the counties, rural life in Dorset had changed little in hundreds of years, which Hardy explored through the rustic characters in many of his novels.
Strongly identifying himself and his work with Dorset, Hardy saw himself as a successor to the Dorset dialect poet William Barneswho had been a friend and mentor. He provided a map of the area, with the names of the villages and towns he coined to represent actual places.
But other features of southern England also influenced Hardy, especially as a poet.
Stonehenge was only the most famous of the many remains of the past scattered throughout the English south. Alive to the past, as a writer Hardy was also sensitive to the future; scores of younger authors, including William Butler YeatsSiegfried Sassoonand Virginia Woolf, visited him, and he discussed poetry with Ezra Pound.
His work had a profound influence on other war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Sassoon. Nor did he seem by nature to be cheerful: Incredibly prolific, Hardy wrote fourteen novels, three volumes of short stories, and several poems between the years and They both received negative reviews, which may have led Hardy to abandoning fiction to write poetry.
From until his death in Hardy published eight volumes of poetry; about one thousand poems were published in his lifetime.
Moreover, between and Hardy published The Dynasts—a huge poetic drama in 3 parts, 19 acts, and scenes.
Using the Napoleonic wars to dramatize his evolving philosophy, Hardy also pioneered a new kind of verse. He wrote his huge work in accordance with conventions of an art that had not yet been invented: It is a shooting-script.
The length and scope of The Dynasts, which was published in three parts over five years, engendered varied, and sometimes bewildered, responses. But bywith the publication of the third part, most reviewers were enthusiastic. AudenPhilip Larkinand Donald HallHardy forged a modern style that nonetheless hewed closely to poetic convention and tradition.
Some of these works are dated as early as Decembera month after her death, and others were composed in March of the following year, after Hardy had visited St.
Juliot, Cornwall, where he first met Emma. But Hardy has always presented scholars and critics with a contradictory body of work; as Jean Brooks suggests in Thomas Hardy:Thomas Hardy was born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England on June 2, , the eldest son of Thomas Hardy and Jemima (Hand) Hardy.
His father was a stonemason and builder; his mother passed on her love of reading and books to her son. Biography of Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy was born June 2, , in the village of Upper Bockhampton, located in Southwestern England. His father was a stone mason and a violinist.
Thomas Hardy > () Short Biography. Portrait of Thomas Hardy from an etching by William Strang () Birth Thomas Hardy was born in Higher Brockhampton, Dorset, near the town of Dorchester. His father was a builder, and played violin in the local church and for local dances. His mother, though she had been brought up in poverty.
Thomas Hardy, the son of a stonemason, was born in Dorset, England, on June 2, He trained as an architect and worked in London and Dorset for ten years.
Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet who set his work--including The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd--in the semi-fictionalized county of initiativeblog.com: Jun 02, Tom Hardy is a British actor known for his roles in the films Black Hawk Down, Star Trek: Nemesis and Inception.
Learn more about his life and career at initiativeblog.com