Thomas Hardy is one of the most renowned poets and novelist in the English literary history. He was born in the year 1940, in the English village of Higher Bockhampton in Dorset. His father Thomas was a stone mason and a master builder, and his mother Jemima was a highly educated woman who enjoyed reading and narrating folk tales of their region t the time. His parents are said to have influenced his life a great deal because he indeed loved country folk and had a passion for literature, as well as music. When he was eight years old, Hardy began school at Julia Martin’s school in Bockhampton. He learned French, German and Latin by teaching himself through the books he found in Dorchester, a town near his home. When he was sixteen, he was put under the apprenticeship of an architecture John Hicks where learned much about architectural drawing and the histories of the houses as well as the families that lived there.
In the year 1862, Hardy was sent to London where he was supposed to work with another architecture called Arthur Blomfield. It is here that Hardy found himself deeply immersed in the culture by visiting museums and theaters where he studied classic literature. At this point, he began writing his own poetry. He then returned to Dorchester with intent to restore the church but he found himself writing more poetry. In 1867, he wrote poems and novels that he published anonymously and were published in serial forms in magazines which were considered popular in England and America. The first of his novels that became popular was Under the Greenwood Tree (1872). Next there came Far From the Madding Crowd (1874). Other popular novels which came in quick succession include The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Together with these larger works he went on to publish three collections of short stories and five other smaller novels. Some of these works were not received well something that pushed him back to his love for poetry and started writing again
In his later years, Hardy found his way back to poetry and in the year 1898 his publication of Wessex Poems came out. After this, he tried his hand in drama and wrote The Dynast, which was published in the year 1908. In total, he wrote eight hundred poems many of which were published in his sunset years. The last two decades of his life saw him achieve so much success that he was compared to Charles Dickens. In the year 1910, he was awarded the Order of Merit. This made him recognized far and wide as one of the best literary icons of the 19th century. His long career spanned the Victorian as well as the modern eras.
