Michael millgate thomas hardy biography dorchester

For a man who lived most of his life within a narrow geographical area, and who managed to avoid the melodramatic incidents that distinguished the careers of more bohemian contemporaries, Thomas Hardy has managed to attract the attention of a surprisingly large number of biographers and gossips.

The fact that he was responsible for much of the text of Florence Emily Hardy’s ‘life’, and sought to re-direct the attention of posterity to those aspects of his career in which he took greatest pride, has been interpreted by some critics of the post-war generation as somewhat sinister, or at least as an unfair concealment of events and human relationships.

(Hardy’s hand in the writing of his third-person autobiography was never well-concealed; several knew the secret even before Hardy died; and anyone familiar with the standard Victorian life-and-letters treatment of a recently-deceased writer may note, by contrast, Hardy’s candour