Thomas Hardy - Novels and Poems

Thomas Hardy Novels and Poems

Far from the Madding Crowd

This is a story about a penniless girl who becomes a woman of means after she inherits her uncle's farm. The plot of this story focuses on the girl's changing relationships with the three men who court her and on their relationships with other people. (1874)

Jude the Obscure

This is the author's last novel, and it dramatizes the tragic conflict between the carnal and spiritual life of Jude Fawley. The man is torn between the love for his cousin and his yearning to become a priest. In this novel the subject of marriage is treated with a candor that is unusual for its late victorian context. (1896)

The Mayor of Casterbridge

This is a tragic story that begins with an English farm worker who gets drunk one day at a country fair, and then he sells his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas. Eighteen years later the wife and daughter reappear, and by this time the farmhand has become the wealthy and respected mayor of Casterbridge. (1886)

Everything Comes

This poem, written after his first wife, Emma's, death, describes her feelings about the house (Max Gate) when they first moved in, and Hardy's response to her complaints:

'The house is bleak and cold
Built so new for me!
All the winds upon the wold
Search it through for me;
No screening trees abound,
And the curious eyes around,
Keep on view for me.'

'My love I am planting trees
As a screen for you
Both from winds, and eyes that tease
And peer in for you.
Only wait till they have grown,
No such bower will be known
As I mean for you.'

'Then I will bear it, Love,
And will wait,' she said.
- So, with years, there grew a grove.
'Skill how great!' she said
'As you wished, Dear?' - 'Yes, I see!
But - I'm dying; and for me
'Tis too late,' she said.