Thomas Hardy (Cyclopedia of World Authors)

About three miles east of Dorchester, in Dorset, England, in a thatched-roof cottage that still stands at one end of the hamlet known as Higher Bockhampton, Thomas Hardy was born in 1840. The place of his birth is important, for it is the center of a region he learned to know and love—a region he called “Wessex” and about which he wrote in all his books.

The first of these books was published in 1871 when Hardy, nearly thirty-one years old, was still lacking in literary training and experience. His entire schooling had been confined to eight years between the ages of...

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