thomas hardy

English - English

Definition of thomas hardy in English English dictionary: a British writer and poet. Many of his novels are set in the countryside of Dorset in the southwest of England, and they often describe the unhappy side of life. His characters are often shown to be struggling against their own feelings and against fate. His best known books include Far From the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure (1840-1928). 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; {i} (1840-1928) English short story writer and poet, author of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles

thomas hardy