INTRODUCTION

This book describes the literary career, writings and critical reception of a singular writer, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), who achieved the status of both major novelist and major poet. His long life, beginning when Victoria was still a young queen and ending a decade after the First World War, saw many revolutionary social and intellectual changes that are refracted in complex ways in his writing. Hardy rose from rural obscurity in Dorset to scale the social heights, declining a knighthood but accepting the Order of Merit, and being accorded the honour of burial in Westminster Abbey.