Between the Pages: Quotes from Thomas Hardy

Between the Pages is a new, weekly blog series which explores the life, times and creative works of well-known authors. I plan to run the blog series until the end of 2015, focusing on one author per month. New posts every Tuesday, plus occasional bonus posts.

The first post in the series is a brief biography of the author, the second looks at the historical period of the author, and the third post discusses their creative works. Finally, the last post includes selected quotations and short excerpts by the author.

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As we’ve established, Thomas Hardy was not exactly the cheeriest of fellows. When I searched on Goodreads for quotes to include in this post, this was in the top five: “Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain”.

Hardy’s writing can be grim but as one of my readers commented on the last post, he wrote about situations from his own observation — it’s not simply gratuitous tragedy.

Between the Pages: Thomas Hardy’s Writing

Between the Pages is a new, weekly blog series which explores the life, times and creative works of well-known authors. I plan to run the blog series until the end of 2015, focusing on one author per month. New posts every Tuesday, plus occasional bonus posts.

The first post in the series is a brief biography of the author, the second looks at the historical period of the author, and the third post discusses their creative works. Finally, the last post includes selected quotations and short excerpts by the author.

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So, I know I said that these posts will be published every Tuesday… And it hasn’t escaped my notice that today is Wednesday. I am a punctual person when deadlines are important, but when deadlines are self-imposed and there’s no great urgency, I think it’s okay to cut ourselves some slack. 🙂

When you think of Thomas Hardy’s writing and storylines, it wouldn’t be surprising if you think of gloom: death, depression, dark and rainy English countryside filled with mud (it’s not all pretty and picturesque, you know). When I researched material for this post, I was amused to find this Guardian infographic: Which Thomas Hardy novel is the bleakest? The graphic lists a key of all the bleak events that occur in each of Hardy’s novels — Jude the Obscure scores the most (no surprises there!), closely followed by Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Between the Pages: Thomas Hardy’s Times

Between the Pages is a new, weekly blog series which explores the life, times and creative works of well-known authors. I plan to run the blog series until the end of 2015, focusing on one author per month. New posts every Tuesday, plus occasional bonus posts.

The first post in the series is a brief biography of the author, the second looks at the historical period of the author, and the third post discusses their creative works. Finally, the last post includes selected quotations and short excerpts by the author.

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In Tuesday’s post (Thomas Hardy’s Life (part II), we discussed his difficult personal life. This post moves on to explore his historical era and the context for his writing, using examples from one of his novels.

The Victorian era was characterised by a stark divide between the social classes — the haves and the have-nots. It was the age of the Industrial Revolution, with thick smog, factories belching smoke and workers who toiled long hours from a young age. One of Hardy’s contemporaries, Charles Dickens, is well-known for his portrayal of the dismal lives of the urban poor.

While Hardy’s novels are mostly set in small country towns and villages, there were hardships nonetheless. In an essay, ‘The Dorsetshire Labourer‘, which Hardy published in 1883, he wrote about the plight of rural dwellers:

Drudgery in the slums and alleys of a city, too long pursued, and accompanied as it too often is by indifferent health, may induce a mood of despondency which is well-nigh permanent; but the same degree of drudgery in the fields results at worst in a mood of painless passivity.

Between the Pages: Thomas Hardy’s Life (part II)

Between the Pages is a new, weekly blog series which explores the life, times and creative works of well-known authors. I plan to run the blog series until the end of 2015, focusing on one author per month. New posts every Tuesday, plus occasional bonus posts.

The first post in the series is a brief biography of the author, the second looks at the historical period of the author, and the third post discusses their creative works. Finally, the last post includes selected quotations and short excerpts by the author.

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There’s a slight change of schedule this week — today, we’re following up Hardy’s personal life before we move on to discussing his era. My post about Hardy’s era is in progress — I’ll publish that in a few days and then the series will be back on track! 🙂

Thomas Hardy, circa 1910 – 1915.
Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

At the end of my last post about Thomas Hardy’s life, I mentioned that he had a difficult personal life. He married his first wife, Emma, in 1874 and for a few years, they were quite happy. But they began to have disagreements and it led to a growing distance between them, most likely prompted by a combination of factors including their childless marriage and Hardy’s growing success.

Between the Pages: Thomas Hardy’s Life

Between the Pages is a new, weekly blog series which explores the life, times and creative works of well-known authors. I plan to run the blog series until the end of 2015, focusing on one author per month. New posts every Tuesday, plus occasional bonus posts.

The first post in the series is a brief biography of the author, the second looks at the historical period of the author, and the third post discusses their creative works. Finally, the last post includes selected quotations and short excerpts by the author.

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Thomas Hardy was born in June 1840, only a few years after the Victorian era began, in the small hamlet of Upper Bockhampton (known today as Higher Bockhampton) in the English county of Dorset.

Thomas Hardy, circa 1910 – 1915.
Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

If you’re unfamiliar with English geography, Dorset is situated in South West England, on the coast of the English Channel. It is renowned as being a beautiful county, with a variety of landscapes: rolling chalk downs, valleys, cliffs and coastline, and it provides the backdrop to Hardy’s writing.

Hardy’s cottage, where he was born and where he wrote two of his novels.
Image copyright: Chris Shaw. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. Image source: Geograph.