Thomas_Hardy的英文简介

Thomas Hardy (1840-1904)

Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, on June 2, 1840, where his

father worked as a master mason and builder. From his father he gained an

appreciation of music, and from his mother an appetite for learning and the delights of

the countryside about his rural home.

Hardy was frail as a child, and did not start at the village school until he was eight

years old. One year later he transferred to a new school in the county town of

Dorchester.

At the age of 16 Hardy helped his father with the architectural

drawings for a restoration of Woodsford Castle. The owner, architect James Hicks,

was impressed by the younger Hardy's work, and took him on as an apprentice.

Hardy later moved to London to work for prominent architect Arthur Blomfield. He

began writing, but his poems were rejected by a number of publishers. Although he

enjoyed life in London, Hardy's health was poor, and he was forced to return to

Dorset.

In 1870 Hardy was sent to plan a church restoration at St. Juliot in Cornwall. There he

met Emma Gifford, sister-in-law of the vicar of . She encouraged him in his

writing, and they were married in 1874.

Hardy published his first novel, Desperate Remedies in 1871, to universal disinterest.

But the following year Under the Greenwood Tree brought Hardy popular acclaim for

the first time. As with most of his fictional works, Greenwood Tree incorporated real

places around Dorset into the plot, including the village school of Higher

Bockhampton that Hardy had first attended as a child.

The success of Greenwood Tree brought Hardy a commission to write a serialized

novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, for Tinsley's Magazine. Once more Hardy drew upon real

life, and the novel mirrors his own courtship of Emma.

Hardy followed this with Far From the Madding Crowd, set in Puddletown (renamed

Weatherby), near his birthplace. This novel finally netted Hardy the success that

enabled him to give up his architectural practice and concentrate solely on writing.

The Hardys lived in London for a short time, then in Yeovil, then in Sturminster

Newton (Stourcastle), which Hardy described as

Newton that Hardy penned Return of the Native, one of his most enduring works.

Finally the Hardys moved to Dorchester, where Thomas designed their new house,

Max Gate, into which they moved in 1885. One year later Hardy published The

Mayor of Casterbridge, followed in 1887 by The Woodlanders and in 1891 by one of

his best works, Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Tess provoked interest, but his next work, Jude the Obscure (1896), catapulted Hardy

into the midst of a storm of controversy. Jude outraged Victoria morality and was

seen as an attack upon the institution of marriage. Its publication caused a rift between

Thomas and Emma, who feared readers would regard it as describing their own

marriage.

Of course the publicity did no harm to book sales, but reader's hid the book behind

plain brown paper wrappers, and the Bishop of Wakefield burned his copy! Hardy

himself was bemused by the reaction his book caused, and he turned away from

writing fiction with some disgust.

For the rest of his life Hardy focussed on poetry, producing several collections,

including Wessex Poems (1898).

Emma Hardy died in November 1912, and was buried in Stinsford churchyard.

Thomas was stricken with guilt and remorse, but the result was some of his best

poetry, expressing his feelings for his wife of 38 years.

All was not gloom, however, for in 1914 Hardy remarried, to Florence Dugdale, his

secretary since 1912. Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928 at his house of Max

Gate in Dorchester. He had expressed the wish to be buried beside Emma, but his

wishes were only partly regarded; his body was interred in Poet's Corner, Westminster

Abbey, and only his heart was buried in Emma's grave at Stinsford.

Did You Know?

A

rumor

has

persisted

since

Hardy's

death

that

it

is

not

the

author's

heart

that

was

buried beside Emma. The story goes that Hardy's housekeeper placed his heart on the

kitchen table, where it was promptly devoured by her cat. Apparently a pig's heart was

used to replace Hardy's own. Truth? Fiction? We will probably never know.

English poet and regional novelist, whose works depict the imaginary county

books appeared when Anthony Trollope (1815-82) wrote his Palliser series, and he

published poetry in the decade of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Hardy's work reflected

his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human life.

greater than the success... To have the strength to roll a stone weighting

a hundredweight to the top of a mountain is a success, and to have the

strength

to

roll

a

stone

of

then

hundredweight

only

halfway

up

that

mount is a failure. But the latter is two or three times as strong a deed.

(Hardy in his diary, 1907)

Thomas Hardy's own life wasn't similar to his stories. He was born on the Egdon

Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester. His father was a master mason and building

contractor. Hardy's mother, whose tastes included Latin poets and French romances,

provided for his education. After schooling in Dorchester Hardy was apprenticed to

an architect. He worked in an office, which specialized in restoration of churches. In

1874 Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford, for whom he wrote 40 years later, after

her death, a group of poems known as VETERIS VESTIGIAE FLAMMAE (Vestiges

of an Old Flame).

At the age of 22 Hardy moved to London and started to write poems, which idealized

the rural life. He was an assistant in the architectural firm of Arthur Blomfield, visited

art galleries, attended evening classes in French at King's College, enjoyed

Shakespeare and opera, and read works of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and John

Stuart Mills, whose positivism influenced him deeply. In 1867 Hardy left London for

the family home in Dorset, and resumed work briefly with Hicks in Dorchester. He

entered into a temporary engagement with Tryphena Sparks, a sixteen-year-old

relative. Hardy continued his architectural work, but encouraged by Emma Lavinia

Gifford, he started to consider literature as his

Unable to find public for his poetry, the novelist George Meredith advised Hardy to

write a novel. His first novel, THE POOR MAN AND THE LADY, was written in

1867, but the book was rejected by many publishers and he destroyed the manuscript.

His first book that gained notice, was FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1874).

After its success Hardy was convinced that he could earn his living as an author. He

devoted himself entirely to writing and produced a series of novels, among them THE

RETURN OF NATIVE (1878), THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (1886).

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES (1891) came into conflict with Victorian morality.

It explored the dark side of his family connections in Berkshire. In the story the poor

villager girl Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by the wealthy Alec D'Uberville. She

becomes pregnant but the child dies in infancy. Tess finds work as a dairymaid on a

farm and falls in love with Angel Clare, a clergyman's son. They marry but when Tess

tells Angel about her past, he hypocritically desert her. Tess becomes Alec's mistress.

Angel returns from Brazil, repenting his harshness, but finds her living with Alec.

Tess kills Alec in desperation, she is arrested and hanged.

Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE (1895) aroused even more debate. The story

dramatized the conflict between carnal and spiritual life, tracing Jude Fawley's life

from his boyhood to his early death. Jude marries Arabella, but deserts her. He falls in

love with his cousin, hypersensitive Sue Bridehead, who marries the decaying

schoolmaster, Phillotson, in a masochist fit. Jude and Sue obtain divorces, but their

life together deteriorates under the pressure of poverty and social disapproval. The

eldest son of Jude and Arabella, a grotesque boy nicknamed 'Father Time', kills their