HARDY, Thomas, English novelist: b. Upper Bockhampton, near Dorchester, Dorset shire, 2 June 1840. The Hardys descend from Thomas Hardy of Melcombe Regis (d. 1599), who was a scion of the old Jersey family of Le Hardy. He was educated at local schools and at 16 was articled to an ecclesiastical architect in Dorchester. In 1863 he pined the prize medal of the Institute of British Archi tects with an essay on "Colored Brick and Terra-Cotta Architecture." His special studies, apart from his profession, were the Greek and Roman classics, and that these exercised a strong influence on his mind may be seen from his literary work. He had written several poems before his first published article, eHow I Built Myself a House," appeared in Chambers' Journal (18 March 1865), He afterward wrote a novel of a revolutionary and anti-social type which fell into the hands of George Meredith as publisher's reader, who advised him to adopt, on his first introduction to the public, ea gentler guise.° Mr. Hardy thereupon suppressed this novel and in 1871 made his first essay in fiction before the public (anonymously) with (Des perate Remedies' (1871). It was followed in 1872 by 'Under the Greenwood (also published anonymously), a beautiful idyll the rustics in which are depicted with a quaint and compelling humor; and by Pair of Blue in 1873. From the Madding Crowd' (1874), which appeared in serial form unsigned in Comilla Magazine, first established his fame, and was by many attributed to George Eliot. His other works in order of publication are 'The Hand of Ethelberta> (1876); 'The Re turn of the Native> (1878) ; 'The Trumpet Major> (1880) • 'A Laodicean) (1881) ; 'Two on a Tower' (1882), first published in the At lantic Monthly; 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' (1886), a powerful and tragic story; 'The Woodlanders> (1887); Tales> (1888) ; 'A Group of Noble Dames> (1891); 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles> (1891), a study of origi nal womanhood on the rack of misfortune; Well-Beloved> (1892) ; 'Life's Little Ironies> (1894); 'Jude, the Obscure' (1895), which first appeared serially in Harper's Maga zine, a depressing book remarkable for its minute depiction of sensuality, and in which the quaint bumpkins who act the part of chorus in Hardy's other tragedies are unrepresented; 'The Well-Beloved> (1897); 'Wessex Poems' (1898) ; 'Poems of the Past and Present' (1902) ; 'The Dynasts,' a drama (in three parts, 1904, 1906, 1908), in which the author interprets the Napoleonic era, in 19 acts and 130 scenes; 'Time's Laughing-stocks and Other Verses> (1909) ; 'A Changed Man' (1913) ; 'Satires of Circumstance' (1914).
Thomas Hardy is the literary interpreter of Wessex (the land of the West Saxons), but specifically of his native Dorsetshire, which was within its area. The localities of his novels can be readily identified; a map has been published which assigns to each novel the locali ties of its various parts. The vanishing types of the rural life of Dorsetshire— farm hands, shepherds, woodlanders,. carriers, etc.—people his works, and to future ages will be seen as he saw them. They depict the struggles of individuals against the blind natural forces that control the world, and by whom they find themselves crushed and broken. In 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles) he has shown how cruelly th,e conventions of the world may react on and bring to ruin a life that under natural condi tions should have been one of happiness. In the Obscure,' the study of dual per sonality is revealed with gripping of somewhat sordid realism; the lower nature constantly dragging down the higher. His treatment of the sexual instinct increased in frankness in the later of his great novels, the two just cited. He knows the peasantry as no other English novelist has ever known them; their patience and impassiveness under misfortune, their grandeur in "the endurance of dooms; and, without slavishly reproducing it, their dialect becomes in his hands a medium, racy of the soil, and impregnated with the salt of an en gaging and suggestive humor. He knows nature in all its moods, but is most at home in its more sombre aspects, as when describing the bleak wastes of Egdon Heath. His language is almost severe in its simplicity, self-repression and freedom from exaggeration. His works, full of humor though they are, yet leave the reader with a deep sense of the sadness of the human lot, and have been described as °an austere descant upon the dust and ashes of things, the cruelty of lust, the fragility of love? He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1910. Consult Child, Hardy' (New York 1916) ; Johnson, Art of Thomas Hardy' (London 1895) Macdonell, 'Thomas Hardy> (ib. 1894) • Sherren, 'The Wessex of Romance> (new ed., ib. 1908) ; Windle, 'The Wessex of Thomas Hardy' (ib. 1901).. See FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD; THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE; TESS OF THE D'URBERVELLES.