Thomas Hardy

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TH was a poet by vocation and became a novelist by profession. The Wessex of his novels has made him arguably a regional novelist. As well as a prolific output in both these forms, he published a unique verse epic bringing together human and supernatural characters, short fiction, a volume for children, and two volumes of actual autobiography masquerading as a biography by his second wife. Since his career as a publishing novelist ran from the 1870s to the 1890s, and his first volume of poetry post-dated his final novel, he has been seen as a Victorian novelist but a mostly twentieth-century poet. This description, however, is not true to the facts of composition. He wrote poetry from early in his life, but did not publish it in volume form until his final novel.

Milestones

2 June 1840

TH , west-country architect, novelist, and poet, was born in a cottage at Higher Bockhampton, a smalll village near Dorchester in Dorset, the eldest child in his family.
Gittings, Robert. Young Thomas Hardy. Penguin.
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16 March 1887

TH received his highest offer yet for the serial rights on a new novel; he delayed, however, until 29 June before signing a contract with W. F. Tillotson and Son of Bolton for what became Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Hardy, Thomas. “General Introduction”. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell, Clarendon Press, pp. 1-103.
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4 July-26 December 1891

TH 's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman, one of the two most famous of his Wessex novels, was serialised in the Graphic.
Hardy, Thomas. “General Introduction”. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell, Clarendon Press, pp. 1-103.
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Purdy, Richard Little. Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study. Oxford University Press.
68

29 November 1891

TH 's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman was published in book form.
Hardy, Thomas. “General Introduction”. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell, Clarendon Press, pp. 1-103.
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Purdy, Richard Little. Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study. Oxford University Press.
72

11 January 1928

TH , architect, novelist, and poet, died at his house, Max Gate, just outside Dorchester.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

2 June 1840

TH , west-country architect, novelist, and poet, was born in a cottage at Higher Bockhampton, a smalll village near Dorchester in Dorset, the eldest child in his family.
Gittings, Robert. Young Thomas Hardy. Penguin.
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