Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy. English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement. He is considered a precursor of many contemporary poets such as Philip Arthur Larkin and Robert Graves .

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 Biography
  • 1 Childhood and youth
  • 2 Literary beginnings
  • 3 Death
• 2 Some of his works
  • 1 Some of his novels
  • 2 His stories
  • 3 Poetry
• 3 Sources

Biography

He was born on 2 June 1840 in Bockhampton , England . His father, Thomas Hardy, was a builder from Higher Bockhampton, an English town near Dorchester , and his mother, Jemima Hand, worked as a cook and maid.

Childhood and youth

After having attended school in Dorchester, at the age of sixteen he became a disciple and assistant to the architect of the same city, John Hicks , with whom he remained until 1862 ; On this date he went to London and began working in the office of the architect Sir Arthur Blomfield. Even when he dedicated himself to the study of architecture , he uninterruptedly cultivated literature and, above all, poetry.

In 1859 , he read Charles Darwin ‘s On the Origin of Species . That same year he wrote his first poem, Domicilium .

He moved to London in 1862 as assistant to the ecclesiastical architect Arthur Blomfield . At this stage he read Herbert Spencer , Huxley , John Stuart Mill, and the romantic and post-romantic poets Mary Shelley , Robert Browning and Algernon Charles Swinburne .

Literary beginnings

In 1865 he published his first article titled ” How I Built Myself a House .” He submitted several of his poems to newspapers, but they were rejected.

In 1867 he returned to Dorchester to work with Hicks. That same year he began his first novel, which was titled The Poor Man and the Lady .

In 1868 he completed The Poor Man and the Lady . In 1870 he headed to Cornwall to plan the restoration of the church, there he met his future wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, the parish priest’s sister-in-law.

Death

He died at Max Gate on January 11 , 1928 and was buried in the so-called Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Some of his works

Hardy’s first novel, The Pauper and the Lady , written in 1867 and offered to several publishers the following year, was never published, and was, in part, used by the same author for the composition of his other narrative work A indiscretion in the life of an heiress. In 1871 Desperate Remedies appears .

The following year, Under the Green Forest , the author’s first important novel and also his most luxuriant, was published , and in 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, an idealization of his courtship with Emma Lavinia Gifford.

With Far from the Maddened Crowd ( 1874 ) begins the series of his most typical novels, to which belong Return to the Country ( 1878 ), The Mayor of Casterbridge ( 1886 ), The Inhabitants of the Woodland ( 1887 ), Tess of Urbervilles ( 1891 ) and Judas the Dark ( 1895 ).

These works are written in classic, naturalistic prose, their characters are governed by the iron forces of nature and by the no less iron mechanisms of Victorian society.

In 1876 he traveled to Holland where he was allowed to visit the Battlefield of Waterloo and which he later described in the great dramatic poem The Dynasties ( 1903 – 1908 ), about the Napoleonic epic, in which he had already inspired the novel The Major Trumpet ( 1880 ). During the prolonged illness in 1880 that forced him to stay in bed for several months, he composed A Laodicense .

In 1882 Two in a Tower appeared , and The Well Beloved in 1892 in installments and in 1897 in book form; This was his last novel.

Some of his novels

• Desperate Remedies, 1871 , published anonymously
• Under the Greenwood Tree, 1872 , published anonymously.
• A Pair of Blue Eyes , 1873
• Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874 , ( Far from the Madding Crowd )
• The Hand of Ethelberta, 1876
• The Return of the Native, 1878
• The Trumpet Major, 1880
• The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886 , (The Mayor of Casterbridge)
• The Woodlanders, 1887
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 1891 , (Tess of the Urbervilles)
• A Group of Noble Dames, 1891,
• Jude the Obscure, 1895 , (Jude the Obscure)
• The beloved 1897 , (The copper)
• The withered arm

His stories

The numerous stories written in different years were collected in volumes titled:

• Wessex Tales ( 1888 )
• A group of noble ladies ( 1891 )
• Little Ironies of Life ( 1894 )
• A Changed Man and Other Tales ( 1913 )
• Widower ( 1912 )

Poetry

The last years of his life he dedicated exclusively to poetry; He gathered together the poetic compositions that he had been writing continuously since his youth and composed many others, published at intervals between them:

• Wessex Poems ( 1898 , v). Poems of the past and present ( 1902 )
• Toys of Time ( 1909 )
• Satires of Circumstances ( 1914 )
• Moments of Vision ( 1917 )
• Late and youthful lyrical poems ( 1922 )
• Human aspects ( 1925 )
• Words of Winter ( 1928 )