Thomas Hardy

2 June 1840 (Stinsford)-11 January 1928. English novelist and poet. His works principally belong to the period of Naturalism. Although he considered himself a poet rather than a novelist and tried to focus his professional career on writing poems, novels such as The Woodlanders (1887) or Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) made him significantly more famous. But also his poems like The Photograph (1890) or Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898) were jointly responsible for his fame in the world of 19th- (and 20th-)century authors.

In contrast to his father (Thomas Hardy Sr.), who worked as a stonemason, his mother Jemima was very well-educated and was Thomas Hardy's teacher before he went to school. Since his family could not afford a university education for him Thomas Hardy trained as an architect after the end of his school education at the age of 16. He even won prizes by prestigious architectural institutes like the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association.

Thomas Hardy died on 11 January 1928 at the age of 87 after having dictated his final poem to his (second) wife on his deathbed.

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Sources:

Brennecke, Jr., Ernest. The Life of Thomas Hardy. New York: Greenberg, 1925.

Langbaum, Robert. Thomas Hardy in Our Time. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, London: Macmillan, 1997

Wilson, Keith. Thomas Hardy on Stage London: Macmillan, 1995.