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Novelists of Victorian Literature |
1840 - 1928 Just as Robert Browning persisted in his jagged poetry while facing criticism for "obscurity," Thomas Hardy remained faithful to the fundamental inspirations of his art even though he makes us take "a full look at the worst." He requires of us a Nietzschean honesty about the false trails to redemption that tempt us. But, in return, Hardy gives us a beautifully intricate and deeply humanizing sense of achieved life and worthy purpose. There is never just bleakness in Hardy, however much there may be of the tragic, for he knows the radiance that belongs, authentically, to our stubborn visions of possibility. Hardy sustained his immense creativity through fourteen novels, dozens of short stories, a three-volume epic in verse, a disguised autobiography, and nearly a thousand poems. Most of his poetry was written after he turned sixty, but it shows no abatement in the imaginative power that had already made him a supreme novelist. His beginnings were humble. But, without benefit of a university education he made himself, in due course, one of the most learned men of his time. Needing a trade, he worked as an architect from 1856 until 1870, mainly at apprentice levels. Then he was ready for the astonishing career that followed. Fittingly, his single greatest creation is architectural--the world he built and called Wessex. "This brooding land of Wessex is the universe in demonstrable, finite compass, a theater for the enactment of human destinies under laws which, we are made to feel, have remained substantially unaltered from the infancy of the world" (J. F. A. Pyre). Hardy makes us see that, whatever our origins, we are of Wessex.View the Thomas Hardy Image Gallery Read the Thomas Hardy Texts Read the Thomas Hardy Critiques |
John P. Farrell / The University of Texas at Austin / Accessibility |
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