Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was one of the most famous authors of the Victorian Era. Hardy is best known for novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles but he also was a very influential poet.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was one of the most famous authors of the Victorian Era. Hardy is best known for novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles but he also was a very influential poet.

The novel was later classified by Hardy for the Wessex Edition of his works into the primary group of "Novels of Character and Environment," versus the other two lesser categories of his novels. The novel remained Hardy's personal favourite, and is widely acknowledged to be among his finest achievements. The "woodland story" it narrates was evidently intended to be the successor to his 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd, but he laid the concept of the novel aside to try other genres and works. The Woodlanders marks the beginnings of controversy for Hardy's novels. At this point in his career he...

Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and offers in ample measure the details of English rural life that Hardy so relished. Hardy's growing taste for tragedy is also evident in the novel. It first appeared, anonymously, as a monthly magazine serial, where it gained a wide readership and critical acclaim. According to Virginia Woolf, "The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book...