Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist, poet and architect who regarded himself first as a poet, though his first collection did not appear until 1898. He became known for novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, many of them set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. His tragic characters struggled against their passions and the social circumstances around them. He died in 1928.