Thomas Hardy

(1840—1928)

United Kingdom

Biography

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although he has shown elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain. The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances.

Hardy said that he first introduced Wessex in Far from the Madding Crowd, which was his first financially successful novel, so much so that we was able to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career.

ePub Books Available by Thomas Hardy

13 Titles Online

A Laodicean [en] (1881)

Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues and is thrust...

Genres: Religion, Romance

A Pair of Blue Eyes [en] (1873)

Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of her parents and society. The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand,...

Genre: Romance

Desperate Remedies [en] (1874)

Described by Hardy as a tale of "mystery, entanglement, surprise and moral obliquity", his first published novel violated the literary decorum of its day with blackmail, murder, and romance. It relates the story of Cytherea, a maid to the eccentric arch-intriguer Miss Aldclyffe, and the man she...

Genre: Thriller/Suspense

Far from the Madding Crowd Book Cover Image

Far from the Madding Crowd [en] (1874)

Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south-west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. When the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene inherits her own farm, she attracts three very...

Genre: Classic Literature

The Hand of Ethelberta [en] (1876)

The only novel from Hardy that that provides a lighter tale, The Hand of Ethelberta, gives account of the life of a woman who lifts herself to the higher classes of the society.

Genres: Comedy, Satire

Jude the Obscure [en] (1895)

Often thought of as Thomas Hardy's best work, not only for the elaborate structure of the plot, where small and subtle details lead to the character's ruin, but in the themes that range from how human loneliness and sensuality can stop a person from trying to fulfill his dreams; to how, when...

Genre: Tragedy

The Mayor of Casterbridge Book Cover Image

The Mayor of Casterbridge [en] (1886)

Thomas Hardy’s almost supernatural insight into the course of wayward lives, his instinctive feeling for the beauty of the rural landscape, and his power to invest that landscape with moral significance all came together in an utterly fluent way in The Mayor of Casterbridge. A classically shaped...

Genre: Tragedy

Tess of the d'Urbervilles Book Cover Image

Tess of the d'Urbervilles [en] (1891)

A pretty young girl has to leave home to make money for her family. She is clever and a good worker; but she is uneducated and does not know the cruel ways of the world. So, when a rich young man says he loves her, she is careful - but not careful enough. He is persuasive, and she is...

Genres: Romance, Tragedy

The Trumpet-Major [en] (1880)

Hardy distrusted the application of nineteenth-century empiricism to history because he felt it marginalized important human elements. In The Trumpet Major, the tale of a woman courted by three competing suitors during the Napoleonic wars, he explores the subversive effects of ordinary human...

Genre: Fiction

Two on a Tower [en] (1882)

Classified by Hardy as a romance and fantasy and now regarded as one of his minor works. The book is one of the Wessex novels, set in a parallel version of late Victorian Dorset.

Genre: Romance

Under the Greenwood Tree Book Cover Image

Under the Greenwood Tree [en] (1872)

One of the most popular of Hardy's novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a romance between a member of the choir and the village schoolmistress.

Genre: Fiction

The Well-Beloved [en] (1897)

The Well-Beloved completes the cycle of Hardy's great novels, reiterating his favourite themes of man's eternal quest for perfection in both love and art, and the suffering that ensues. Jocelyn Pierston, celebrated sculptor, tries to create an image of his ideal woman - his imaginary...

Genre: Romance

The Woodlanders [en] (1887)

Love, and the erratic heart, are at the centre of Hardy's 'woodland story'. Set in the beautiful Blackmoor Vale, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-to-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of the dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred...

Genre: Romance