Legacy: The Artists Behind The Legends

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet active from the 19th to the early 20th century, best known for works such as Jude the Obscure and Far From the Maddening Crowd. Now, I know when we hear words like England and 19th century, we all start thinking the same thing – more super tight collars of the Victorian Era. Hardy, however, was a Victorian realist much like that of George Eliot, who we’ve covered previously on the podcast, and he was pretty damn critical of the majority of Victorian society, particularly when it came to those living in the more rural areas in the country of Britain. It was these areas that truly inspired Hardy – his novels center on somewhat tragic characters struggling with social circumstances and passions, and most of whom live in the semi-fictional region of Wessex, meant to mirror his native land of South West England. His initial fame sparked from his highly successful novels, though Hardy personally considered himself more of a poet in spite of the fact that his first colle