Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, to a father who was a builder and a mother who was a cook. He attended school in Dorchester, where he read his first books and came into contact with the English countryside, which he deeply loved—a theme evident throughout his work. Meanwhile, he began learning French and German and would play the violin at weddings and festivals as he roamed the countryside. In 1856, he became an apprentice to architect John Hicks, and until 1861, while staying with him, he studied Latin and Ancient Greek at night. In 1862, he moved to London, where he became acquainted with and embraced agnosticism. In 1867, he returned to Dorchester, and in 1868, he began his first novel, "The Poor Man and the Lady," which was not preserved. In 1870, he was sent by his employer to Cornwall, where he met his future wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, and in the same year, he wrote his first published novel, "Desperate Remedies." In 1910, he was awarded the Order of Merit, and in 1913 and 1920, he was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Cambridge and Oxford. In 1912, his wife passed away, and in 1914, he remarried Florence Dugdale. With the outbreak of the war, he joined a group of writers who drafted texts in support of the "Allied Cause," and during this time, he published various works, including a collection of poems, "Human Shows," which was the last to be published during his lifetime. He died on January 11, 1928, and his ashes are interred in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, while his heart is buried in the grave of his first wife in Stinsford. Many of his works became well-known to the general public as they were adapted into films ("Far from the Madding Crowd," "Tess," "Jude the Obscure," "The Woodlanders," among others).