Author

Books by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was an English novelist and poet born in Dorset, the rural county that forms the fictional "Wessex" of his novels. He trained as an architect before turning to writing, and his major novels — including Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Jude the Obscure — are studies of rural life under pressure from modernity, class, and fate. After Jude the Obscure was attacked for immorality, he stopped writing novels and spent the last thirty years of his life writing poetry. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, published in 1891, remains his most widely read novel.