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Hardy (THOMAS an novelist born)

THOMAS, an novelist; born in Dorset, England, June 2, 1840. He was brought up as an architect, and practiced some time at Dorchester, next prosecuted his studies in design at London, gaining professional distinction. His intention was now to become an art critic, but the experiment of a not wholly unsuccessful work of fiction, "Desperate Remedies" (1871), shaped his destiny otherwise. His next novels, "Under the Greenwood Tree" (1872) and "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (1873), prepared the way for his first great work, "Far from the Madding Crowd," published in the "Cornhill Magazine" in 1874. Its immediate success secured its author an audience for a series of novels: "The Hand of Ethelberta" (1876); "The Return of the Native" (1878); "The Trumpet-major" (1880); "A Laodicean" (1881); "Two on a Tower" (1882); "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886); "The Woodlanders" (1887); "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (1891); and "Jude the Obscure" (1895); "Wessex Tales" (1888); "A Group of Noble Dames" (1891); "Life's Little Ironies" (1894); "The Three Wayfarers" (1893); "Wessex Poems" (1898); "Times' Laughing Stock" (1910); "Satires of Circumstance" (1915); "The Dynasts," etc. 66 HARFLEUR