Thomas Hardy

Born in Dorset in 1840, he trained first as an architect before turning to fiction and poetry. The landscapes, dialects, and customs of southwest England became the foundation of the imagined region he called Wessex, the setting for many of his best-known works.

He is especially remembered for novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. His writing often explores class, love, fate, and the pressures of society, and his frank treatment of difficult subjects made some of his later novels controversial.

After the storm of criticism that followed Jude the Obscure, he largely gave up writing novels and devoted himself to poetry. By the time of his death in 1928, he was widely recognized as a major figure in English literature, admired for both his fiction and his verse.