Thomas Hardy – Page 6 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’

By Dr Oliver Tearle

Thomas Hardy’s novels often overshadow his poetry, although a handful of poems from his vast poetic output remain popular in verse anthologies. One such case is ‘The Darkling Thrush’, a great winter poem which was first published on 29 December 1900. Poised on the cusp of a new year (and even, depending on your view of the matter, a new century), Hardy reflects in this poem on the events of the nineteenth century, his own feelings about the future, and his attitude to nature. Here is ‘The Darkling Thrush’, followed by a close analysis of its features.

An Interesting Summary of Thomas Hardy’s A Laodicean

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

In our pick of Thomas Hardy novels, we included A Laodicean, not because we consider it among his very best (it isn’t) but because it’s such an unusual novel in his oeuvre.

Interesting Facts about Far from the Madding Crowd

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Far from the Madding Crowd, first published in 1874, remains one of Hardy’s most popular novels. It was his first big success as a writer – his fourth published novel, it was the one which helped to convince him that abandoning architecture in favour of writing novels could be a lucrative career move.

The Best Thomas Hardy Novels

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote 14 novels, so picking a top ten won’t prove too difficult a task. What are the best Thomas Hardy novels? This is undoubtedly going to prove a difficult and controversial issue, but we thought we’d take this chance to select the ten we think are worth reading – and we’ve even ranked the novels in order (and the order, too, is bound to prove controversial).

Five Fascinating Facts about Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June in 1840. (Seventeen years later to the day, composer Edward Elgar would be born.) Let’s raise a glass of something (cider?) to one of the great poets and novelists of English literature. 1. Much of the common perception of Thomas Hardy is incorrect, or, at the very least, … Read more