Thomas Hardy: An illustrated biography

by Timothy O'Sullivan

"Particularly in his poems but to an increasingly apparent extent in his novels, Thomas Hardy drew on his own experiences. When in Jude the Obscure he wrote about the bitterness of frustrated ambition or in Tess of the D'Urbervilles about the misfortunes of a distinguished family who had 'gone under', he was writing of his own and the despair and remorse of poems like 'Revulsion' and 'Beeny Cliff' were equally personal. But Hardy was an intensely private man and when, as an international celebrity, journalists and scholars alike began to intrude in the search for links between his life and work, he went to considerable lengths to frustrate them. Recent research has made fact of much that was previously only speculation so that it is now possible to put faces and pictures to many aspects of his work. This new biography describes the connections between Thomas Hardy's life and work with the help of over 150 illustrations, personal and topographical, including many contemporary photographs, and sketches by Hardy and his first wife Emma."

Genres: Biography

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1976