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The Right of Way: Wessex

The rustics of Hardy, comparable only to Shakespeare's, seem to grow out of the very soil of that half-imaginary Wessex which he has made famous. Their humor and quaint wisdom constitute a kind of Greek chorus in the Wessex books. Although Hardy sees "all that is irresponsible for good and evil in a woman's character, all that is untrustworthy in her brain and will, all that is alluring in her variability," he has yet ventured to marry twice, first in 1874 and again in 1914.

He lives in his own Wessex, writing occasional poems of flashing insight.