Thomas Hardy was born June 2nd, 1840 in Higher Brockhampton, Dorset, England. When he was eight, Hardy began attending Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester. While there, he demonstrated great academic potential. However, his family didn't have the means for higher education, so he left school at 16 and became apprenticed to a local architect.
In 1898, Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. While some suggest that Hardy gave up writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, it was never verified.
Hardy then published Poems of the Past and the Present in 1901, which contains "The Darkling Thrush" (originally titled "The Century's End"), one of his best-known poems about the turn of the century.
Some of Hardy's more famous works are from Poems 1912–13, a collection of poems written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. They had been estranged for 20 years, and these lyric poems express a deeply felt "regret and remorse".
In 1910, Hardy was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was nominated again for the prize 11 years later and received a total of 25 nominations until 1927, but never won.
In 1914, Hardy was one of fifty-three leading British authors—including H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—who signed their names to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War.
Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died on January 11th, 1928 at 88 years old. His funeral was on January 16th at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. His family and friends concurred; however, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.
Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels, Hardy is now recognized as one of the great poets of the 20th century, and his verse had a profound influence on later writers, including Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin.
We are reading from Satires of Circumstance, a collection published in 1914.
