Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

Works (Prose)

Novels of character and environment

• The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, unpublished and lost)
• Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872)
• Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
• The Return of the Native (1878)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (1886)
• The Woodlanders (1887)
• Wessex Tales (1888, a collection of short stories)
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891)
• Life's Little Ironies (1894, a collection of short stories)
• Jude the Obscure (1895)

Romances and fantasies

• A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (1873)
• The Trumpet-Major (1880)
• Two on a Tower: A Romance (1882)
• A Group of Noble Dames (1891, a collection of short stories)
• The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament (1897) (first published as a serial from 1892)

Novels of ingenuity

• Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871)
• The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876)
• A Laodicean: A Story of To-day (1881)