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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 · 741,676 ratings · 41,215 reviews · 2,201 distinct works • Similar authors
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
3.84 avg rating — 300,830 ratings — published 1891 — 43 editions
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Far From the Madding Crowd
3.97 avg rating — 165,112 ratings — published 1874 — 1091 editions
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Jude the Obscure
3.83 avg rating — 75,531 ratings — published 1895 — 789 editions
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The Mayor of Casterbridge
3.86 avg rating — 65,714 ratings — published 1886 — 768 editions
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The Return of the Native
3.88 avg rating — 40,270 ratings — published 1878 — 788 editions
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The Woodlanders
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3.90 avg rating — 17,761 ratings — published 1887 — 789 editions
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Under the Greenwood Tree
3.64 avg rating — 14,503 ratings — published 1872 — 525 editions
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A Pair of Blue Eyes
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3.79 avg rating — 9,004 ratings — published 1873 — 480 editions
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Two on a Tower
3.71 avg rating — 4,502 ratings — published 1882 — 510 editions
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Desperate Remedies
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3.78 avg rating — 3,617 ratings — published 1871 — 513 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
1346 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
1145 likes
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Polls

September 2020 Revisit the Shelf Poll

Middlemarch by George Eliot pub 1871, 904 pp. last read July 2016
 
  74 votes, 21.4%

Animal Farm by George Orwell pub 1945, 95 pp. last read July 2016
 
  73 votes, 21.1%

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë pub 1847, 464 pp. last read July 2017
 
  56 votes, 16.2%

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin pub 1833, 240 pp. last read March 2019
 
  39 votes, 11.3%

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne pub 1851, 225 pp. last read Nov 2018
 
  39 votes, 11.3%

King Lear by William Shakespeare pub 1605 338 pp. last read Oct 2012
 
  33 votes, 9.5%

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy pub 1878, 448 pp. last read Oct 2015
 
  32 votes, 9.2%

346 total votes
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