Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorset England and died 1928. In his lifetime he became a novelist and a poet characterized by his pessimism. When he was a child his mother taught him Latin poems and French romances, while his father was a building contractor. When Hardy was 11 he moved to London to be an architectural firm assistant. While there he took French classes, visited the theater, and read works of modernist authors such as Charles Darwin. These factors influenced him to give up his architectural career in 1865 and peruse poetry. Hardy's work was not positively received and it took a toil on him leading him to move back to Dorset in 1867. There he began writing novels which challenged traditional Victorian ideals. However, they created a great deal of controversy which led him to go back to writing poetry. During his life Hardy published lyrics , as well as monologues and a epic drama. His poems where an influence on modernism due to his spontaneous style of writing . His work describes the breaking of the Victorian traditional culture , decline in religion, and the growing pessimism that followed. One of his most notable poems is The Dark-ling Thrush which really displays the pessimism in the end of the Victorian era.