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Jun 2, 1840 — Jan 11, 1928· 87 yrs

UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · FICTION · SHORT

Thomas Hardy

Also known as: HARDY, THOMAS, 1840-1928., Thomas HARDY

65
BOOKS
3.9
AVG RATING (74)
14
READERS

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, during his lifetime he was much better known for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a great novelist. The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex (based on the Dorchester region where he grew up) and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Dorchester, United Kingdom
Wikipedia

THIS novel being one wherein the great campaign of the heroine begins after an event in her experience which has usually been treated as fatal to her part of protagonist, or at least as the virtual ending of her enterprises and hopes, it was quite contrary to avowed conventions that the public should welcome the book, and agree with me in holding that there was something more to be said in fiction than had been said about the shaded side of a well-known catastrophe.

— from Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Most acclaimed

#2

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

4.1 (16)

An intimate portrait of a woman, one of literature's most admirable and tragic heroines...Tess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother. When her ne'er-do-well father learns that his family is the last of a long noble line, the d'Urbervilles, he sends Tess on a journey to meet her supposed kin—a journey that will see her victimized by lust, poverty, and hypocrisy. Shaped by an acute sense of social injustice and by a vision of human fate cosmic in scope, her story is a singular blending of harsh realism and poignant beauty. Thomas Hardy created in Tess not a standard Victorian heroine but a woman whose intense vitality shines against the bleak backdrop of a dying way of life. The novel shocked contemporary readers with its honesty and remains a timeless commentary on the human condition.

#1

The Return of the Native

1922

4.0 (7)

Clym Yeobright, the "native" of the title, returns to the countryside where he was born--much as Hardy himself, after a stint in London, returned to his native Dorsetshire to write. Clym falls in love with his cousin, the beautiful but cold Eustacia Vye, who is fatally attracted to the faithless, irresponsible Damon Wildeve. Much of the action is propelled by fate in the form of coincidence, but the characters also have a hand in the catastrophes that befall them.

#3

The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time

0.0 (0)

[Purloined Letter]( / Edgar Allan Poe A terribly strange bed / Wilkie Collins The three strangers / Thomas Hardy T[he red-headed league]( / Arthur Conan Doyle The corpus delecti / Melville Davisson Post Gentlemen and players / E.W. Hornung A journey / Edith Wharton The leopard man's story / Jack London A retrieved reformation / O. Henry The problem of Cell 13 / Jacques Futrelle The absent-minded coterie / Robert Barr The invisible man / G.K. Chesterton The infallible Godahl / Frederick Irving Anderson The adventure of the unique "Hamlet" / Vincent Starrett The Gioconda smile / Aldous Huxley Haircut / Ring Lardner The killers / Ernest Hemingway The hands of Mr. Ottermole / Thomas Burke The little house at Croix-Rousse / Georges Simenon The case of the missing patriarchs / Logan Clendening Clerical error / James Gould Cozzens The two bottles of relish / Lord Dunsany The chaser / John Collier The perfect crime / Ben Ray Redman Yours truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert Bloch The blind spot / Barry Perowne The catbird seat / James Thurber Recipe for murder / C.P. Donnel Jr. The nine mile walk / Harry Kemelman Kill or be killed / Ogden Nash The specialty of the house / Stanley Ellin Nearly perfect / A.A. Milne The Gettysburg Bugle / Ellery Queen The last spin / Evan Hunter Stand up and die! / Mickey Spillane A new leaf / Jack Ritchie The snail-watcher / Patricia Highsmith The long way down / Edward D. Hoch The man who never told a lie / Isaac Asimov I have / John Gardner [Quitters, Inc.]( / Stephen King Horn man / Clark Howard The new girl friend / Ruth Rendell By the dawn's early light / Lawrence Block Iris / Stephen Greenleaf High Darktown / James Ellroy The Pietro Andromache / Sara Paretsky Soft monkey / Harlan Ellison The hand of Carlos / Charles McCarry Karen makes out / Elmore Leonard

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