1. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) If asked to state his profession, without hesitation Hardy would have declared himself a poet rather than a novelist. He began to write poetry in the late 1850s, in his early teens, and continued until his death at the age of eighty-seven.

2. Early Years Thomas Hardy was born in Upper Bockhampton in Dorset, in the west of England. His father was a successful mason and offered his son a good education. His mother fostered in him a love of literature, at school he learned to read Latin, while at home he taught himself Greek. When he was sixteen he finished his formal education. As his father was a master mason, the son’s first ambition was to design buildings. At sixteen he was apprenticed to an ecclesiastical architect, John Hicks. His employer enjoyed the classics, and allowed his employees time to read. At the same time, he was encouraged in his literary interests by a Cambridge scholar, Horace Moule, who became Hardy’s friend and mentor. He introduced him to the Greek classics in the original, literary criticism and progressive theology. However a career in this profession did not present itself as a practical possibility. Having finished his apprenticeship, he left for London in 1862 and became assistant to an architect, Arthur Bloomfield. Hardy was determined to become a great poet and he began writing in earnest in his spare time. He sent his verses to literary magazines throughout the capital but none were accepted. In 1867, bored by his work and disappointed by his lack of success as a poet, he moved back to Dorset.

3. The Novelist With an attitude that he had little to lose, Hardy attempted his first novel in the summer of 1867, The Poor Man and the Lady, and in doing so set himself on the road of being one of the most well-loved of all Victorian novelists. Like his verse, he wrote novels from an unselfconscious view of reality. Although this first novel was not accepted for publication, his second one, Desperate Remedies, was published in 1871. Thirteen more novels were to follow. With his novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, he had made enough in royalties to propose to Emma Lavinia Gifford, a woman he had fallen in love with while restoring a church in Cornwall four years previously. The marriage did not go well and after her illness (she suffered from a mental illness) and subsequent death, he wrote many love poems, evocations of her as she was in her “air-blue gown” half a century before. Although writing novels gave him financial success, as a form it remained for him a compromise to poetry. In 1895 when his latest novel, Jude the Obscure, was lampooned, Jude the Obscene, he turned back to poetry. Ignoring the critics poor reception of his verse, he continued writing and published eight volumes between 1898 and 1928.

4. The Poet Thomas Hardy and Gerard Manley Hopkins are two Victorian poets, who stand as beacons for modern poetry. While Hopkins died before the twentieth century began, Hardy lived on until 1928. Hopkins might be characterized as looking upwards, while Hardy on the other hand was looking backwards. As has been mentioned, Hardy’s had an unselfconscious view of reality. He cannot be associated with other Victorian poets like Swinburne or Tennyson, whose style was more decorative and abstract. Today’s readers enjoy Hardy’s poems as much as his novels. He himself was very modest about them, and called them “unadjusted impressions”, which however might, by “humbly recording diverse readings of phenomena as they are forced upon us by chance and change”, lead to a philosophy. He is the first of the modern poets, who are suspicious of writing well. He broke away from poetic diction to a quite unexpected vocabulary. Against Matthew Arnold’s disparagement, Hardy said that, “a certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is of the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done.” The awkwardness was intended to give a sense of penetrating through the façade of language and syntax as well as the deceptions of circumstance. Younger poets like W.H. Auden studying at Oxford, read Hardy, when they were looking for inspiration for their own craft. Auden wrote later,” My first Master was Thomas Hardy, and I think I was lucky in my choice. He was a good poet, perhaps a great one, but not too good. Much as I loved him, even I could see that his diction was often clumsy and forced and that a lot of his poems were plain bad. This gave me hope, where a flawless poet would have given me despair. He was modern without being too modern…If I looked through his spectacles, at least I was conscious of a certain eyestrain. Lastly his metrical variety, his fondness for complicated stanza forms, were an invaluable training in the craft of making.”

5. Late Years With the poet’s belief that everything was a worthwhile subject for his work, he wrote of war, nature, friendship, bereavement and love and marriage. The collection published in 1914, Satires of circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries explore the private relationship between husband and wife, inspired by the death of his wife, Emma Gifford. The collection Moments of vision and Miscellaneous Verses which followed in 1917 contain some of Hardy’s finest poems, prompted by the outbreak of the First World War which came as a great shock to the poet. ‘before Marching and After’ commemorates the loss of his cousin, Frank George, while ‘In Time of the “Breaking of Nations” ‘, describing three different yet interconnected pastoral scenes, captures the futility of war and the greater importance of human life over territorial gain. Hardy had no confidence in a supernatural god, but he was fond for a pantheon of forces. These are the demiurges who move us pathetically about. They are animated, Hardy seems to imply, not by malignity but by indifference as in ‘Hap’ and ‘The Subalterns’. Hardy’s universe offers a grotesque version of the traditional one, because in place of an imminent divinity he substitutes an imminent indifference. Though many cite him as pessimistic, he is characterized nonetheless by compassion for humankind and his conscious purpose is always to defend and fortify, insofar as possible, the human.

6. The Mayor of Casterbridge Homework Due Wednesday 17 th August Find the page number and highlight the passage, then make a summary to present in class 1.Find 2 examples in the novel of Hardy’s understanding of the countryside, its laborers, life and villages/towns 2.Find 2 examples of Hardy’s expert knowledge of architecture 3.Find an example of Hardy’s interest in Dorset history 4.Find examples of Hardy’s understanding of human life being controlled by indifferent forces 5.Find examples of his compassion for humankind