HARDY, THOMAS (1840- ), English novelist, was born in Dorsetshire on the 2nd of June 1840. His family was one of the branches of the Dorset Hardys, formerly of influence in and near the valley of the Frome, claiming descent from John Le Hardy of Jersey (son of Clement Le Hardy, lieutenant-governor of that island in 1488), who settled in the west of England. His maternal ancestors were the Swetman, Childs or Child, and kindred families, who before and after 1635 were small landed proprietors in Melbury Osmond, Dorset, and adjoining parishes. He was educated at local schools, 1848-1854, and afterwards privately, and in 1856 was articled to Mr John Hicks, an ecclesiastical architect of Dorchester. In 1859 he began writing verse and essays, but in 1861 was compelled to apply himself more strictly to architecture, sketching and measuring many old Dorset churches with a view to their restoration. In 1862 he went to London (which he had first visited at the age of nine) and became assistant to the late Sir Arthur Blomfield, R.A. In 1863 he won the medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for an essay on _Coloured Brick and Terra-cotta Architecture_, and in the same year won the prize of the Architectural Association for design. In March 1865 his first short story was published in _Chambers's Journal_, and during the next two or three years he wrote a good deal of verse, being somewhat uncertain whether to take to architecture or to literature as a profession. In 1867 he left London for Weymouth, and during that and the following year wrote a "purpose" story, which in 1869 was accepted by Messrs Chapman and Hall. The manuscript had been read by Mr George Meredith, who asked the writer to call on him, and advised him not to print it, but to try another, with more plot. The manuscript was withdrawn and re-written, but never published. In 1870 Mr Hardy took Mr Meredith's advice too literally, and constructed a novel that was all plot, which was published in 1871 under the title _Desperate Remedies_. In 1872 appeared _Under the Greenwood Tree_, a "rural painting of the Dutch school," in which Mr Hardy had already "found himself," and which he has never surpassed in happy and delicate perfection of art. _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, in which tragedy and irony come into his work together, was published in 1873. In 1874 Mr Hardy married Emma Lavinia, daughter of the late T. Attersoll Gifford of Plymouth. His first popular success was made by _Far from the Madding Crowd_ (1874), which, on its appearance anonymously in the _Cornhill Magazine_, was attributed by many to George Eliot. Then came _The Hand of Ethelberta_ (1876), described, not inaptly, as "a comedy in chapters"; _The Return of the Native_ (1878), the most sombre and, in some ways, the most powerful and characteristic of Mr Hardy's novels; _The Trumpet-Major_ (1880); _A Laodicean_ (1881); _Two on a Tower_ (1882), a long excursion in constructive irony; _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ (1886); _The Woodlanders_ (1887); _Wessex Tales_ (1888); _A Group of Noble Dames_ (1891); _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ (1891), Mr Hardy's most famous novel; _Life's Little Ironies_ (1894); _Jude the Obscure_ (1895), his most thoughtful and least popular book; _The Well-Beloved_, a reprint, with some revision, of a story originally published in the _Illustrated London News_ in 1892 (1897); _Wessex Poems_, written during the previous thirty years, with illustrations by the author (1898); and _The Dynasts_ (2 parts, 1904-1906). In 1909 appeared _Time's Laughing-stocks and other Verses_. In all his work Mr Hardy is concerned with one thing, seen under two aspects; not civilization, nor manners, but the principle of life itself, invisibly realized in humanity as sex, seen visibly in the world as what we call nature. He is a fatalist, perhaps rather a determinist, and he studies the workings of fate or law (ruling through inexorable moods or humours), in the chief vivifying and disturbing influence in life, women. His view of women is more French than English; it is subtle, a little cruel, not as tolerant as it seems, thoroughly a man's point of view, and not, as with Mr Meredith, man's and woman's at once. He sees all that is irresponsible for good and evil in a woman's character, all that is untrustworthy in her brain and will, all that is alluring in her variability. He is her apologist, but always with a reserve of private judgment. No one has created more attractive women of a certain class, women whom a man would have been more likely to love or to regret loving. In his earlier books he is somewhat careful over the reputation of his heroines; gradually he allows them more liberty, with a franker treatment of instinct and its consequences. _Jude the Obscure_ is perhaps the most unbiassed consideration in English fiction of the more complicated questions of sex. There is almost no passion in his work, neither the author nor his characters ever seeming able to pass beyond the state of curiosity, the most intellectually interesting of limitations, under the influence of any emotion. In his feeling for nature, curiosity sometimes seems to broaden into a more intimate communion. The heath, the village with its peasants, the change of every hour among the fields and on the roads of that English countryside which he has made his own--the Dorsetshire and Wiltshire "Wessex"--mean more to him, in a sense, than even the spectacle of man and woman in their blind and painful and absorbing struggle for existence. His knowledge of woman confirms him in a suspension of judgment; his knowledge of nature brings him nearer to the unchanging and consoling element in the world. All the entertainment which he gets out of life comes to him from his contemplation of the peasant, as himself a rooted part of the earth, translating the dumbness of the fields into humour. His peasants have been compared with Shakespeare's; he has the Shakespearean sense of their placid vegetation by the side of hurrying animal life, to which they act the part of chorus, with an unconscious wisdom in their close, narrow and undistracted view of things. The order of merit was conferred upon Mr Hardy in July 1910. Entry: HARDY
It has been generally agreed by the best critics that Miss Austen has never been approached in her own domain. No one indeed has attempted any close rivalry. No other novelist has so concerned herself or himself with the trivial daily comedy of small provincial family life, disdaining equally the assistance offered by passion, crime and religion. Whatever Miss Austen may have thought privately of these favourite ingredients of fiction, she disregarded all alike when she took her pen in hand. Her interest was in life's little perplexities of emotion and conduct; her gaze was steadily ironical. The most untoward event in any of her books is Louisa's fall from the Cobb at Lyme Regis, in _Persuasion_; the most abandoned, Maria's elopement with Crawford, in _Mansfield Park_. In pure ironical humour Miss Austen's only peer among novelists is George Meredith, and indeed _Emma_ may be said to be her _Egoist_, or the _Egoist_ his _Emma_. But irony and fidelity to the fact alone would not have carried her down the ages. To these gifts she allied a perfect sense of dramatic progression and an admirably lucid and flowing prose style which makes her stories the easiest reading. Entry: AUSTEN
In 1726 Defoe published a curious and amusing little pamphlet entitled _Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business, or Private Abuses Public Grievances, exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant Wages of our Women-Servants, Footmen, &c._ This subject was a favourite one with him, and in the pamphlet he showed the immaturity of his political views by advocating legislative interference in these matters. Towards the end of this same year _The Complete English Tradesman_, which may be supposed to sum up the experience of his business life, appeared, and its second volume followed two years afterwards. This book has been variously judged. It is generally and traditionally praised, but those who have read it will be more disposed to agree with Charles Lamb, who considers it "of a vile and debasing tendency," and thinks it "almost impossible to suppose the author in earnest." The intolerable meanness advocated for the sake of the paltriest gains, the entire ignoring of any pursuit in life except money-getting, and the representation of the whole duty of man as consisting first in the attainment of a competent fortune, and next, when that fortune has been attained, in spending not more than half of it, are certainly repulsive enough. But there are no reasons for thinking the performance ironical or insincere, and it cannot be doubted that Defoe would have been honestly unable even to understand Lamb's indignation. To 1726 also belongs _The Political History of the Devil_. This is a curious book, partly explanatory of Defoe's ideas on morality, and partly belonging to a series of demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others are _A System of Magic_ (1726), and _An Essay on the History of Apparitions_ (1728), issued the year before under another title. In all these works his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible; but in _The History of the Devil_ he is somewhat hampered by an insufficiently worked-out theory as to the nature and personal existence of his hero, and the manner in which he handles the subject is an odd and not altogether satisfactory mixture of irony and earnestness. _A Plan of English Commerce_, containing very enlightened views on export trade, appeared in 1728. Entry: DEFOE
In 1756 he made his first mark by a satire upon Bolingbroke entitled _A Vindication of Natural Society_. It purported to be a posthumous work from the pen of Bolingbroke, and to present a view of the miseries and evils arising to mankind from every species of artificial society. The imitation of the fine style of that magnificent writer but bad patriot is admirable. As a satire the piece is a failure, for the simple reason that the substance of it might well pass for a perfectly true, no less than a very eloquent statement of social blunders and calamities. Such acute critics as Chesterfield and Warburton thought the performance serious. Rousseau, whose famous discourse on the evils of civilization had appeared six years before, would have read Burke's ironical vindication of natural society without a suspicion of its irony. There have indeed been found persons who insist that the _Vindication_ was a really serious expression of the writer's own opinions. This is absolutely incredible, for various reasons. Burke felt now, as he did thirty years later, that civil institutions cannot wisely or safely be measured by the tests of pure reason. His sagacity discerned that the rationalism by which Bolingbroke and the deistic school believed themselves to have overthrown revealed religion, was equally calculated to undermine the structure of political government. This was precisely the actual course on which speculation was entering in France at that moment. His _Vindication_ is meant to be a reduction to an absurdity. The rising revolutionary school in France, if they had read it, would have taken it for a demonstration of the theorem to be proved. The only interest of the piece for us lies in the proof which it furnishes, that at the opening of his life Burke had the same scornful antipathy to political rationalism which flamed out in such overwhelming passion at its close. Entry: A