ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840. He began the career of an architect in the 1860s but by the end of the decade he was turning to writing - both poetry and novels. His first novel, Desperate Remedies (discounting the lost The Poor Man and the Lady), was published in 1871, but his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, was 1898. None of the poems he submitted to magazines in 1866 was printed. H. then is another anomaly in this collection, since his published work is after the terminal date; however, the poems selected here were written before 1890, even though they may have been revised for publication.
