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THIS SEMESTER
Fiction II
Unit IV
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
THIS CLASS
Thomas Hardy
An Introduction
Thomas Hardy
An Introduction
 Life
 Time
 Works
Life
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Birth
Education
Career
Marriage
Achievements
Death
The Hardy Birthplace
Marker
The marker is situated just
behind the Higher
Bockhampton thatched
cottage.
Photograph 2002 by Philip
V. Allingham
Birth
Date of Birth: 2nd June 1840
Tuesday, 8.00am
Place of Birth: Stinsford,
Dorchester, Dorset, England
Father: Thomas
Mother: Jemima
Education
 Mother educated him till
his age of eight
 First school at
Bockhampton at age eight
 For several years he
attended a school run by a
Mr Last
 Learnt Latin and Greek
there
 In 1862 enrolled at King’s
College, London
Career
 Architect
 Writer
Architect
 Joined Hicks, an architect, as an apprentice
 Won Prizes from Royal Institute Of British
Architects and the Architectural
Association
Writer
 The Poor Man and the Lady his first novel
turned down by publishers
 Desperate Remedies his first published
novel
 Wrote novels, short stories, poems and
drama
 Stopped writing novels after the publication
of Jude the Obscure
Marriage
 Marries Emma Gifford in 1874
 Emma dies in 1912
 Marries Florence Dugdale in 1914
Achievements
 Becomes Grand Old Man of English Letters
 Won Order of Merit
 Won several degrees of honour
Death
 On 11th January 1928, Wednesday just after
9.00 p.m. he passed away
 His heart was buried at Stinsford
 His ashes were buried in Westminster
Abbey
Time
 Victorian Age
 Victorian Literature
 Victorian Writers
Victorian Age
 Period between 1832 and 1901
 From the Passage of the First Reform Bill to
the Death of Queen Victoria
 Early Victorian Age 1832-1848
 Mid-Victorian Age 1848-1870
 Late Victorian Age 1870-1901
Victorian Literature
Prose or Verse the literature of the age
reflected the pressing issues of the age
such as:
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Social
Economic
Religious
Intellectual
Victorian Writers
Poets
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Tennyson
Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Christina Rossetti
Matthew Arnold
G. M. Hopkins
Victorian Writers
Essayists
Thomas Carlyle
John Ruskin
Arnold
 Walter Pater
Victorian Writers
Novelists
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Bronte Sisters
Charles Dickens
William Makepeace Thackeray
Elizabeth Gaskell
George Eliot
George Meredith
Anthony Trollope
Thomas Hardy
Samuel Butler
Works
 List of Works
 Philosophy of Life
 Features of his works
List of Works
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Novels
Short Story Collections
Poetry Collections
Dramas
Novels
 The Poor Man and the Lady [1867
Unpublished]
 Desperate Remedies [1871]
 Under the Greenwood Tree [1872]
 A Pair of Blue Eyes [1873]
Novels
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Far From the Madding Crowd [1874]
The Hand of Ethelberta [1876]
The Return of the Native [1878]
The Trumpet-Major [1880]
A Laodicean [1881]
Novels
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Two on a Tower [1882]
The Mayor of Casterbridge [1886]
The Woodlanders [1887]
The Well-Beloved [1892 in serial form,1897
in book form]
 Jude the Obscure [1895]
Short Story Collections
 Wessex Tales [1888]
 A Group of Noble Dames [1891]
 Life’s Little Ironies [1894]
Poetry Collections
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The Photograph [1890]
Wessex Poems and Other Verses [1898]
Poems of the Past and Present [1901]
The Man He Killed [1902]
Times Laughing Stocks and Other Verses [1909]
The Voice [1912]
Poetry Collections
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Satires of Circumstance [1914]
Moments of Vision [1917]
Collected Poems [1919]
Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other
Verses [1922]
 Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and
Trifles [1925]
Poetry Collections
 Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres
[1928]
 The Complete Poems [1976]
 Selected Poems[1993]
 Hardy: Poems [1995]
 Thomas Hardy: Selected Poetry and
Nonfictional Prose [1996]
 Selected Poems [1998]
 Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems
[2001]
Dramas
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The Dynasts Part 1[1904]
The Dynasts Part 2 [1906]
The Dynasts Part 3 [1908]
The Famous Tragedy of
the Queen of Cornwall at
Tintagel in Lyonnesse [1923]
Philosophy of Life
 Pessimistic view of life
 Life is to suffer at the hands of external
forces
 “…happiness was but the occasional
episode in a general drama of pain”
 Man a mere plaything of an impersonal and
maligned fate
As flies to wanton boys
Are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport
King Lear Act IV Sc 1 35-37
Features of His Works
 Accusing finger at destiny and taking sides with
the protagonist
 His plots hinges on Co-incidences and
mischances
 Close to nature, rural and country scenes
 Characters are mostly ordinary men and women
living close to the soil
 Minor rustics offer pithy humour
 Wessex finds a prominent place in his works
THE END
COMING NEXT
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
An Introduction
Tess of d’Urbervilles
A Novel by Thomas Hardy
THANK YOU