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Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man

by Claire Tomalin

3.87 · rating details · 219 ratings · 36 reviews

Whitbread Award winner Claire Tomalin's seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. Today Thomas Hardy is best known for creating the great Wessex landscape as the backdrop to his rural stories, starting with "Far from the Madding Crowd," and making them classics. But his true legacy is that of a progressive thinker. When he published "...moreWhitbread Award winner Claire Tomalin's seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. Today Thomas Hardy is best known for creating the great Wessex landscape as the backdrop to his rural stories, starting with "Far from the Madding Crowd," and making them classics. But his true legacy is that of a progressive thinker. When he published "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and "Jude the Obscure" late in his career, Hardy explored a very different world than that of his rural tales, one in which the plight of lower classes and women take center stage while the higher classes are damned. Ironically, though, Hardy remained cloaked in the arms of this very upper class during the publication of these books, acting at all times in complete convention with the rules of society. Was he using his books to express himself in a way he felt unable to do in the company he kept, or did he know sensationalism would sell? Award-winning author Claire Tomalin expertly reconstructs the life that led Hardy to maintain conventionality and write revolution. Born in Dorset in 1840, Hardy came of age in rather meager circumstances. At sixteen, he left home for London and slowly worked his way through many rejections to become a published writer. Despite his mother's admonitions to never marry, he wed Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874 and, even though he fell easily in love, stayed true to her till her death in 1912. He frequently toured London society, but few felt they knew the true Hardy, and it is this very core of self that Tomalin elegantly brings us to know so completely. Hardy's work consistently challenged sexual and religious conventions in a way that few other books of his time did. Though hispersonal modesty and kindness allowed some to underestimate him or even to pity him, they did not prevent him from taking on the central themes of human experience-time, memory, loss, love, fear, grief, anger, uncertainty, death. And it was exactly his quiet life, full of the small, personal dramas of family quarrels, rivalries, and at times, despair, that infuses his works with the rich detail that sets them apart as masterpieces. In this engrossing biography, Tomalin skillfully identifies the inner demons and the outer mores that drove Hardy and presents a rich and complex portrait of one of the greatest figures in English literature.(less)

Hardcover, 486 pages

Published January 5th 2006 by Viking

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Nov 14, 2009

karen rated it

· review of another edition

when thomas hardy died, he wanted to be buried in stinsford. pretty much everyone else wanted him to be buried in westminster abbey. so a compromise - they take out his heart and put it in a tin and bury that in stinsford and the rest of him is to be cremated and buried in westminster abbey. but then a cat comes along and eats the heart so they have to kill the cat and bury that instead.

that, my friends, is a 'pastoral legend' that i grew up believing and this book killed for me. th...morewhen thomas hardy died, he wanted to be buried in stinsford. pretty much everyone else wanted him to be buried in westminster abbey. so a compromise - they take out his heart and put it in a tin and bury that in stinsford and the rest of him is to be cremated and buried in westminster abbey. but then a cat comes along and eats the heart so they have to kill the cat and bury that instead.

that, my friends, is a 'pastoral legend' that i grew up believing and this book killed for me. the whole cat part is untrue, the dual-burial is very true. but i think that story emerged because thomas hardys life was pretty...boring. his creative life and output is amazing, but to achieve that he mostly had to sit around, writing. no complicated entanglements, no flipping over the christmas table, no drugged-out suicide attempts. thomas hardy stayed in an unsuitable marriage for years upon years, quietly writing and grasping for fame and social betterment. staid and english. tea and dogs. the best hardy quote from the book is his own: "there is not that regular gradation among womankind that there is among men. you may meet with 999 exactly alike, and then the thousandth - not a little better, but far above them. practically therefore, it is useless for a man to seek after this thousandth to make her his". sheesh. this concept of settling for average rather than going out and chasing that mythical thousandth woman may have been what led to his unhappy marriage. but it did lead him to create some of the more memorable women in fiction. (although i will never care about tess, and she was apparently his favorite) as for the rest of it, i didnt really know that much about hardy, having only read his poems and novels. it is a good book to get the chronology straight, it explains some of the thematic progressions. and ms. tomalin has this great quote (which i know alfonso will disagree with): "reading jude is like being hit in the face over and over again." i could not have said it any better myself. it is truly unfortunate that the critical reaction to jude made him give up writing novels, because i would have loved to have seen what would have been his next stage in envelope-pushing. but this bio is a pretty good book, just not the most exciting thing i have ever read.

and yes, i am one of those thousandth women... (less)

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Feb 26, 2008

micah rated it

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I don't know why I thought Thomas Hardy's life would be exciting and inspiring, but I did, and according to this lady, it sure wasn't. I guess I shouldn't shoot the messenger but if you like Hardy's books, find a balance and symmetry to them that's deeply pleasing and ache at the beauty of his descriptions you will not want to know that he married a woman he grew to hate and ignore, who herself went crazy and died, after which he became consumed with guilt and spent the rest of his life writin...more

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Feb 10, 2012

Publicserviceradio rated it

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Claire Tomalin is fast becoming the epitome of the biographer. Her books are praised far and wide and this one regarding the wonderful Thomas Hardy is no exception. She separates the man from his writing very well but also emphasises the deep connection Hardy has to his creations and the biographical nature of some of the characters and plots surrounding them.

Hardy did not have the fortunate birth of some of his literary contemporaries and was always something of an outsider by nature....moreClaire Tomalin is fast becoming the epitome of the biographer. Her books are praised far and wide and this one regarding the wonderful Thomas Hardy is no exception. She separates the man from his writing very well but also emphasises the deep connection Hardy has to his creations and the biographical nature of some of the characters and plots surrounding them.

Hardy did not have the fortunate birth of some of his literary contemporaries and was always something of an outsider by nature. Slightly jealous of others noble birth he continually aspired to the gentlemanly nature of the Victorian season dweller. Yet, also he maintained a curious distance to some of the mopre extravagant examples of rich notoriety and kept a dangerous radical streak that he kept hidden from upper-class society until they required release through the wonderful characters in his novels.

He found it difficult to get published initially as many authors do, and always considered himself more of a poet writing fiction professionally. Indeed, the level to which he bowdlerised much of his writing shows us that he wasn’t as protective of his art as some authors can be. Due to the graphic and, at the time, shocking nature of some of the set pieces within his books he would often be required to change endings and plot lines at various points throughout the publication process. His books were serialised first in periodicals of the time, so the changes were not practically difficult but somewhere the intolerant nature of the literary elite must have galled Hardy greatly.

Later in his life, after the publication and reaction to Jude The Obscure Hardy settled in to his poetry and a more solitary existence, reserving his public side for dignitaries and visitors. His troubled wife bore much with regards to his mood swings and in a storyline worthy of one of the man’s novels, Hardy only really appreciated Emma once she had died.

He devoted much time after her death, despite remarrying, on the memory of his late wife writing many, many poems about their life together. Emma is a curious figure throughout the book and it’s fair to say that Tomalin is a little hard on her. She ridicules Emma’s own attempts at writing (“readable, but nothing more”), and traduces her early assistance to Hardy when trying to be published. Surely her encouragement must have kept him going in those long weeks waiting for responses from publishers and bouncing back from initial disappointment? Perhaps also if her own literary ambitions had been supported by Hardy in the same way she did his, she may have amounted to more. Perhaps Tomalin thinks Emma should have been grateful to be with such a learned scholar and got on with it rather than having dreams of her own, but this would belie the individuality that Hardy seemed to find attractive in women.

When Tomalin writes about Thomas however, an enormous amount of respect and good feeling pours from the book. It is a beautifully crafted biography about a fascinating man whose life will no doubt fill volumes yet to come. (less)

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Dec 29, 2011

Julie rated it

I was a bit disappointed by this book , i didnt feel that at the end of the book i knew any more about Hardy the man and what made him tick, it was interesting the relationship between him and his first wife and how he was trapped in a loveless marriage,and how his 2nd wife set out to capture him ! It is sad that more documents have not survived as his first wife destroyed all the letters he had sent her, it is also a shame more pictures or photos of the houses that he lived in were not included...more

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Feb 06, 2011

Ali rated it

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I loved this biography of one of my favourite writers. Claire Tomalin has done a marvelous job of showing us both Hardy the man and Hardy the writer. It appears she appreciates him slightly more as a poet than a novelist - but her insight into both his novels and his poetry is affectionate and fascinating and may help me better understand his work from now on.
I found the story of the young Hardy growing up in quite poor and difficult circumstances in Bockhampton really fascinating - I suppo...more

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Sep 08, 2011

Lucy rated it

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Let's get the niggles out of the way....there is a little too much speculation: whether Hardy's mother could write, assuming he was disappointed at not visiting the Great Exhibition when there is no evidence, discoursing on what sort of parents Tom and Emma would have been, describing the wedding despite admitting there is no record, and then straying too far into marriage guidance.
There are a few horrible infelicities of language which suggest that maybe her editor is a little in awe of h...more

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Mar 17, 2011

Nicki rated it

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Shelves: 2011, biography-autobiography, non-fiction

**This is an excerpt. To read the entire review, go to Every Book and Cranny.**

In this biography Tomalin manages to be detailed but not tedious – which in my view is no small feat. Her writing is fluid, simple, and unpretentious. She does not make too many assumptions. I imagine that when compiling a biography, particularly for an enigmatic character like Hardy, it would be easy to infer too much. Tomalin mostly sticks to what she can corroborate with journals, letters, news ar...more

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Nov 26, 2009

Nancy rated it

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Shelves: listened-to, history, biography

Tom and I listened to this while on a trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming. If we'd been able to get NPR in more places I'd never have finished it. Ms. Tomalin was overly thorough with details about the births and deaths of relatives, speculations about when Hardy might have discovered he was conceived before his parents married and how that might have affected his work. Perhaps it is better read than listened to. I'm sure I would have skimmed through many parts of this book if I had been reading it ra...more

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

Besides viewing Hardy's life from a 21st-century perspective, Claire Tomalin emphasizes his poetry as much as his novels. Her decision to do so may have stemmed from a newly found fondness for his poetry, or it may have been her rationale for writing a new Hardy biography among so many already available. Tomalin is a biographer so confident in her own voice that she can make any subject seem fresh and memorable. As in her biographies of Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Katheri

...more

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Sep 08, 2009

Chris Laskey rated it

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This is a very engaging work that reads with strong clarity. I do find that it doesn't set its teeth too deep and I would say that it floats a little on that top where you wish it could be deeper into Hardy. Of course that can be make for a difficult work as the subject must have a clear and detailed record available, such as the case was for H.G. Wells ,whose biography from several years ago was quite thorough. Hardy at turns was a controller of his image (and his life too it seems) pursuing t...more

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Aug 03, 2011

Alberthe rated it

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Shelves: master, non-fiction

It is an easy and interesting read, so if you just want a quick overview of Hardy's life, it does the job. I became, however, increasingly annoyed with all the speculation on Tomalin's part - 'he must have thought so-and-so', 'if they did this and that, did they react so-and-so?' When there is no possibility of knowing, I'd have preferred no guesses. Tomalin also inserts her own judgements constantly. Instead of letting e.g. Florence or Emma's words speak for themselves, Tomalin must tell us how...more

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Dec 30, 2010

Kari rated it

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Shelves: thomas-hardy

Claire Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy was disappointing for several reasons. The first of these is that it reads more as an extended bibliography of his work. Tomalin carefully outlines (and organizes each chapter according to) the book by Hardy's various publications. She gives a plot summary of each novel, her evaluation of it, and the circumstances in which Hardy penned the work. One wishes for more of Hardy the man, not Hardy the novelist. Overall, however, she sketches a fine port...more

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Jun 15, 2010

Stewart rated it

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When I was in high school, I read Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native." That was about 45 years ago, and I don't remember a thing about the novel. Much more recently, I read several favorable reviews of Claire Tomalin's 2007 biography of Thomas, so I decided to revisit the English author by way of this biography and read several of his novels later.
Hardy (1840-1928) grew up and spent most of his adult life in the Dorset area of southwest England. Almost all his fiction...more

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Dec 22, 2009

Lloyd rated it

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Being a Hardy enthusiast, it maddens me to hear people turn their noses up when he's mentioned before churning out the cheap and hackneyed 'well, he's depressing' line. It was refreshing, then, to finally get around to reading Claire Tomalin's well-reviewed biography which, in part, discusses why Hardy was so often at pains to deny the characters of his Great Novels a certain happily-ever-afterness.

Many of Hardy's denigrators would, though, concede that he writes beautifully, and his...more

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Aug 22, 2011

Brian Robbins rated it

Shelves: biography

Wow! Only reached end of chapter 3 - how dare decorating get in the way! Riveting stuff so far. Often find this isn't the case with the subjects early years in biographies, but this is excellent.

Brilliant biography. She was able to present Hardy's complex relationships in a sufficiently detailed and rounded way, and never with those irritatingly manufactured controvesies that so many writers of biography seem to feel the need to manufacture or to add fuel to e.g. the delightful A. N...more

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Aug 22, 2010

Christopher H. rated it

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Shelves: biography, british-literature, historical-non-fiction, poetry, victorian-literature, thomas-hardy, read-in-2010

Claire Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy is simply superb! I believe that I enjoyed the book even more because I recently read (or re-read) all of his major novels, many of his short stories, and much of his poetry. It was simply delightful to be able to immediately relate to the points she made. It was also fascinating to see how much of Hardy's own personal life, as well as that of his Dorset family and friends, influenced his fiction and poetry.

As Tomalin points out and discu...more

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Oct 02, 2009

Joanna rated it

· review of another edition

I always can tell what makes a good biography, at least in my eyes. It’s after having read the final page, when I close the book and try to go about my daily life only to discover that I haven’t quite got the life I’ve just read out of my head, that I know that what I finished was particularly good. Tomalin's biography on one of the most well-respected and widely-read English authors is one such book. Hardy grew up in a poor country family, but even at a young age showed great promise for learni...more

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Dec 14, 2009

Booksrock rated it

· review of another edition

Hardy's realism and capacity for detail have always fascinated me. This bio was extremely interesting. However, I never discovered why he wrote what he did; perhaps, that is too much to ask of any biographer. In a way, though she described him as appearing to others and generally "happy", I found him rather souless. In the end, I think I have lots of details and anecdotes and even, some of his personal writings. Yet, I never really found the man who wrote those wonderful books and ...more

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Apr 18, 2010

Jessica Fure rated it

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Should a biography make you want to rush out and read more of the subject's work? This one certainly does.

I picked this up thanks to Nick Hornby's glowing review, and found it really was all that. Tomalin's focus on Hardy as a poet actually serves to help a newcomer to Hardy understand the nuances of his work, and proves an interesting unifying theme to his life.

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Jun 15, 2009

Tracey Wilde rated it

Although Claire Tomalin is obviously a big fan of Thomas Hardy's poetry this was a well balanced biography. Very interesting and very readable. It has made me want to read more of his work especially the poetry.

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Mar 15, 2010

Joyce M. Tice rated it

· review of another edition

Absolutely excellent. It ties Hardy's life and works together and presents him in full depth of character and detail of life. When I finished I felt as though I knew him personally.

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Nov 24, 2010

Laura McNeal rated it

· review of another edition

This biography is beautiful and complete. It is particularly valuable as a glimpse into the life of Thomas Hardy's wife.

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Aug 02, 2011

Melissa added it · review of another edition

Read Millgate's Biography instead. Nothing new here.

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May 22, 2010

Dana rated it

· review of another edition

Tomalin is the best of biographers. Exhaustive and lengthy, yet keeps you fascinated by the man she brings to life in this book. Incredible research and rich detail written with real talent.

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May 28, 2009

Ruth Khanna rated it

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Great reading. Amazing insights into Hardy's life and times. Made me understand where he was coming from when he wrote books like Tess of the D'urbervilles and Jude The Obscure

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Oct 01, 2007

D. rated it

· review of another edition

This was a very nice, thorough biography of Hardy. It made me want to go back and reread some of his books and poetry now that I know a bit more about his influences and the parts of his life that inspired his writing. It took me a long time to read this book--I only had 30-minute snatches of time here and there. I'd recommend reading it if you have more time to devote to it--I didn't like reading it in such a piecemeal fashion.

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Nov 12, 2011

Leigh rated it

· review of another edition

I mainly read this to learn more abt Hardy's personal life. Since his characters tend to be so conflicted about which romantic partner to pick and inevitably seem to choose the wrong one, i was curious to see if this also played out in Hardy's own life. At any rate, I found out what I wanted to know but cannot exactly say that the book was riveting.

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Apr 19, 2008

Pat rated it

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I never liked much of anything that Thomas Hardy wrote. I thought that maybe if I read a biography of him, I might understand him better. Besides, I heard Claire Tomalin interviewed on NPR and she made his life sound so interesting - at least the end of it. However, I never go beyond his early adulthood. Could not find the interest to complete the book.

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Oct 15, 2008

Stephen rated it

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This is the third biography by Claire Tomalin I've read. After 150 pages I'm entranced by her ability to create the environment which Hardy inhabited in his native Dorset, and subsequently London. I'm definitely gearing up to read some of his short fiction.

Very good story, but I haven't managed to read anything by Hardy.

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Dec 11, 2010

Julie rated it

· review of another edition

This biography apporached the man through the poetry but is able to distinguish between the man and his work. It manages to be sympathetic to Hardy and both his wives. It shares his love of the countryside. Now I want to read his poems, having known him previously only thorugh his more famous novels.

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About Claire Tomalin

Born Claire Delavenay in London, she was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.

She became literary editor of the 'New Statesman' and also the 'Sunday Times'. She has written several noted biographies and her work has been recognised with the award of the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1991 Hawthornden Prize for 'The Invisible Woman The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles D...more

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The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens

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