The 6/2 Day Thread of Thomas Hardy

Novelist, short story writer and poet Thomas Hardy was born on this day in 1840, in the English village of Stinsford. He is one of my favorite writers; one of my daughters has the middle name of Tess. Hardy wrote lovely novels about characters in tragic situations. His soaring descriptive prose matched (at least) that of his fellow Victorian writers and he surpassed them in his mature, compassionate approach toward his unfortunate characters, treating themes that would have been sensationalized by many of his contemporaries in a sensitive fashion. His novels include Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Hardy poured his heart and soul into his novels and for some reason was distressed when they were denounced as pornography; he eventually stopped writing them and focused on his primary love, poetry, for the rest of his career. I read a biography of Thomas Hardy; he led a remarkably dull life. On the other hand, he was the subject of a Monty Python sketch, and that’s pretty cool.