Thomas Hardy's Ten Essential Victorian Novels

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) is celebrated for his dark, suspenseful novels critiquing Victorian society. Born in Dorset, England, to a stonemason father and an educated mother, he apprenticed as an architect and moved to London in 1862, studying at King's College. Disillusioned by class divisions, he returned to Dorset and began writing in 1871. His ten major novels include: 'Desperate Remedies' (1871), a Gothic sensation novel; 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' (1873), a tragic love triangle; 'Far From the Madding Crowd' (1874), exploring independence versus desire; 'The Hand of Ethelberta' (1876), critiquing class mobility; 'The Return of the Native' (1878), a tragedy set on Egdon Heath; 'The Trumpet-Major' (1880), his only historical novel set during the Napoleonic Wars; 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' (1886), a tale of fate and remorse; 'The Woodlanders' (1887), about social aspiration and loyalty; 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' (1891), a controversial indictment of sexual hypocrisy; and 'Jude the Obscure' (1895), his final novel critiquing marriage laws and thwarted ambition. Hardy married Emma Gifford in 1874; her death in 1912 deeply affected him. He remarried Florence Emily Dugdale in 1914. In 1910, he was appointed to the Order of Merit and was nominated 25 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming a finalist in 1923. He died on January 11, 1928, at age 87, and his ashes are in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.