Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy,  (1840-1928). British novelist and poet. The son of a Dorset builder, he was educated locally and became an architect. Most of his novels are set in Wessex, an area of southwest England that includes his native Dorset. Although Hardy became popular with Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), his later novels, including Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and the fatalistic Jude the Obscure (1895), were bitterly attacked by reviewers because they outraged contemporary morals. As a result, he abandoned fiction and published several volumes of poetry, which contained both new poems and some written years earlier. The Dynasts (1904-08) is an epic verse-drama. Despite the adverse reactions he was awarded an OM in 1910 and was buried in West-minster Abbey.