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Thomas Hardy

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Thomas Hardy


Born
in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England
June 02, 1840

Died
January 11, 1928

Genre
Fiction, Poetry

Influences
Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, John Milton, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Bro ...more


Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chos ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 3.87 · 757,864 ratings · 43,235 reviews · 2,642 distinct works • Similar authors
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
3.84 avg rating — 306,683 ratings — published 1891 — 463 editions
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Far From the Madding Crowd
3.97 avg rating — 169,156 ratings — published 1874 — 4 editions
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Jude the Obscure
3.84 avg rating — 77,043 ratings — published 1895 — 1919 editions
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The Mayor of Casterbridge
3.87 avg rating — 66,964 ratings — published 1886 — 2027 editions
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The Return of the Native
3.88 avg rating — 40,946 ratings — published 1878 — 1872 editions
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The Woodlanders
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3.90 avg rating — 18,190 ratings — published 1887 — 1621 editions
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Under the Greenwood Tree
3.64 avg rating — 14,909 ratings — published 1872 — 805 editions
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A Pair of Blue Eyes
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3.79 avg rating — 9,206 ratings — published 1873 — 1024 editions
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Two on a Tower
3.71 avg rating — 4,664 ratings — published 1882 — 1008 editions
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Desperate Remedies
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3.79 avg rating — 3,699 ratings — published 1871 — 948 editions
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Quotes by Thomas Hardy  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Personal Notebooks Of Thomas Hardy
1347 likes
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“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
1319 likes
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“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Classic Collection
tags: strength, woman
1149 likes
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Polls

March 2017 Old School Classic Poll

 
  51 votes, 16.6%

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, 1862, 244 pages
 
  43 votes, 14.0%

Utopia by Thomas More, 1516, 135 pages
 
  33 votes, 10.7%

 
  32 votes, 10.4%

 
  27 votes, 8.8%

The Arabian Nights by Anonymous, 800, 1049 pages
 
  27 votes, 8.8%

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, 1842, 464 pages
 
  24 votes, 7.8%

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1848, 437 pages
 
  20 votes, 6.5%

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, 1895, 310 pages
 
  19 votes, 6.2%

 
  16 votes, 5.2%

The Red and the Black by Stendhal, 1830, 608 pages
 
  9 votes, 2.9%

Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, 1899, 562 pages
 
  6 votes, 1.9%

 
  1 vote, 0.3%

308 total votes
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