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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 · 755,887 ratings · 42,973 reviews · 2,581 distinct works • Similar authors
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
3.84 avg rating — 305,971 ratings — published 1891 — 2340 editions
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Far From the Madding Crowd
3.97 avg rating — 168,630 ratings — published 1874 — 1061 editions
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Jude the Obscure
3.84 avg rating — 76,859 ratings — published 1895 — 3 editions
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The Mayor of Casterbridge
3.87 avg rating — 66,806 ratings — published 1886
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The Return of the Native
3.88 avg rating — 40,846 ratings — published 1878 — 1872 editions
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The Woodlanders
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3.90 avg rating — 18,129 ratings — published 1887 — 1621 editions
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Under the Greenwood Tree
3.64 avg rating — 14,868 ratings — published 1872 — 1090 editions
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A Pair of Blue Eyes
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3.79 avg rating — 9,176 ratings — published 1873 — 1028 editions
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Two on a Tower
3.71 avg rating — 4,649 ratings — published 1882 — 1007 editions
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Desperate Remedies
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3.79 avg rating — 3,685 ratings — published 1871 — 727 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
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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
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Polls

May 2017 Revisit the Shelf-Reread Poll

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 331 pages, 1955
 
  57 votes, 16.5%

 
  44 votes, 12.8%

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, 592 pages, 1957
 
  29 votes, 8.4%

 
  28 votes, 8.1%

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, 329 pages, 1856
 
  27 votes, 7.8%

 
  24 votes, 7.0%

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, 320 pages, 1935
 
  23 votes, 6.7%

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, 464 pages, 1847
 
  22 votes, 6.4%

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, 521 pages, 1854
 
  20 votes, 5.8%

 
  19 votes, 5.5%

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 964 pages, 1877
 
  19 votes, 5.5%

King Lear by William Shakespeare, 338 pages, 1603
 
  16 votes, 4.6%

 
  14 votes, 4.1%

Rob Roy by Walter Scott, 501 pages, 1817
 
  3 votes, 0.9%

345 total votes
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