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.
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.