13 Surprising Facts about Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was a Victorian writer with some serious baggage. Then again, name one who wasn’t!

From surprising career changes, to a wife he didn’t love until she died, to a split burial (it’s as ick as it sounds), Hardy had a fascinating life and death.

I read a couple of Hardy novels when I studied English literature in university, but there’s so much I didn’t know about the author. Then in February of 2020, I co-led a read-along of one of Thomas Hardy’s most famous novels, Jude the Obscure, and did a deep dive into the author’s works. In my research, I uncovered many Thomas Hardy facts that will surprise even his devoted readers.

So whether you’re researching Hardy facts for a school paper or just want to learn more about the interesting Victorian novelist and poet, you’re in the right place. Let’s get to know this quixotic English writer a little better.

In this post, I’ll tell you 13 surprising facts about Thomas Hardy, classic English writer, and give you some context on his final novel, Jude the Obscure.

Can’t read it all now? Make sure you pin this post for future studies on Thomas Hardy.

Whenever possible, I recommend buying books at local bookshops or through Bookshop.org, because shopping there puts the profits right into the hands of indie bookstores all over the country.

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Who was Thomas Hardy?

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English writer in the Victorian Realist tradition. He was a native of Dorset, England, and the author of fourteen novels, eight volumes of poetry, and three volumes of short stories.

The best known Thomas Hardy novels include Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and The Woodlanders.

But there’s so much more to know about Thomas Hardy to get real insight into his volume of works.

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Thomas Hardy left school at 16

Thomas Hardy came from a family of modest means, a fact of which he was acutely aware in London society. This is even more notable when you consider that he didn’t begin his formal education until the age of eight, having been homeschooled by his well-read mother until then.

At the age of sixteen, Thomas Hardy left formal education and became an apprentice to a local architect, John Hicks. (Similarly, John Steinbeck dropped out of Stanford University and became a struggling writer and laborer.)

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Hardy had a big career change

Thomas Hardy was actually a bit of a rising star in architecture long before he ever became a famous novelist. Before he turned 22, Hardy relocated to London to join a busy and notable architectural firm. All in all, he worked in the field of architecture for 16 years before quitting to focus on writing.

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You can visit the unique “Hardy Tree” at London’s St. Pancras Old Church

While working as an architect, Thomas Hardy was charged with solving the problem of moving the bodies out of the cemetery at St. Pancras Old Church in London to make way for a new railway line. After relocating all the remains, he decided, for reasons unknown, to place all the headstones in a tight, circular pattern around a nearby tree, now dubbed “The Hardy Tree.”

The Hardy Tree’s roots have grown up and over many of the stones, enhancing the rather strange and evocative image.

Related: Visiting London and want to check out some more literary sights? Read everything you need to know to visit the Charles Dickens Museum in London as well as the Sherlock Holmes Museum.

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Thomas Hardy was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 25 times (but never won)

Thomas Hardy was nominated for the Nobel Prize every year from 1910-14, again in 1920, and 1922- 27 for a total of 25 nominations. His novels had largely been praised by literary critics, but Hardy never actually won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Perhaps it’s for the best. Many talented writers have found themselves unable to write after winning the prestigious award, including one of my favorites, John Steinbeck. While Thomas Hardy never won the coveted prize, he was awarded an Order of Merit in 1910.

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Thomas Hardy may have invented the term “Cliffhanger”…. literally

Thomas Hardy’s first novel was A Pair of Blue Eyes, which was serialized in Tinsley Magazine from 1872-73. At the end of one of the chapters, one of his characters is left literally hanging from a cliff (and readers, of course, had to wait for the next installment before finding out what happens next).

As with the etymology of many words in our lexicon, it isn’t proven that it was Hardy’s story that inspired the use of “cliffhanger,” but it’s still a great origin story. How’s that for a fun Thomas Hardy facts?

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Hardy was friendly with many other famous contemporary writers

While at his home, Max Gate, Jude the Obscure author Thomas Hardy received many other writers of his day as visitors, including one of my personal favorites, Virginia Woolf. She raved about him:

“Thus it is no mere transcript of life at a certain time and place that Hardy has given us. It is a vision of the world and of man’s lot as they revealed themselves to a powerful imagination, a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul.”

Virginia Woolf on thomas hardy

Related: Like learning fun facts about classic authors? Check out these lesser-known facts about Edith Wharton, facts about Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, and truly surprising facts about Elizabeth Gaskell.

Hardy considered himself more poet than novelist

After Jude the Obscure‘s disastrous reception and Hardy’s abandonment of novel-writing, he turned exclusively to poetry. Posthumously, Thomas Hardy’s poetry has been better appreciated, and he is credited with influencing such poets as Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas.

If you want a peek into the genius of Thomas Hardy as a poet, I recommend checking out the short poem, “The Shadow on the Stone.” Make sure you read it aloud and appreciate the rhythm and use of alliteration.

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Thomas Hardy was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, it shook up the intellectual world, to put it mildly. Thomas Hardy was one of those deeply affected by it.

Darwinian theory suggests that the forces that rule life are chance, necessity, and the survival of the fittest, not Victorian morality or divine predeterminism. These Darwinian themes are pervasive in Hardy’s writing, perhaps most especially in Jude the Obscure.

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Hardy’s novels as we know them are significantly altered from their originals

Thomas Hardy struggled his entire writing life against Victorian censorship. He had difficulty finding publishers who would print his work without drastically changing the story to represent the Victorian ideals of morality.

In the serial versions of Hardy’s novels (as they first appeared), there were significant plot changes and omissions in order to placate editors. Generally, the Thomas Hardy novels you buy nowadays are the versions as he originally wrote them.

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Thomas Hardy was married two times, with varying success

We can’t discuss Thomas Hardy facts without mentioning his marriages. Thomas Hardy wrote a lot about marriage, and his own experiences with marriage are interesting stores in their own rite.

Hardy’s first marriage was to Emma Lavinia Gifford. She actively encouraged Hardy in his desire to write and is believed to have inspired his novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes. A little more than a decade into their difficult marriage, the two were essentially completely estranged. By 1899, Emma had chosen to live in the attic as a recluse.

Even though they’d been estranged for more than twelve years, Emma’s death in 1912 affected Hardy deeply and inspired The Poems of 1912-13, said to be not only the very best of Thomas Hardy’s poetry but some of the greatest love poems ever written in the English language. I have to say, I find them incredibly moving, especially to anyone who was experienced grief and loss.

Two years after Emma’s death, he married Florence Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. According to her, it was a true love match.

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Hardy’s first wife hated Jude the Obscure

It’s reported that Thomas Hardy never showed his manuscript of Jude the Obscure to Emma before publishing it, and that she hated it when she read it.

Emma’s hatred was likely due to her increasing religious devotion later in life. Jude the Obscure does not paint a very rosy picture of the institution of marriage, whereas marriage was glorified as the ultimate state of happiness in the world of Victorian Christianity (why do you think this era popularized the Marriage Plot novels like Austen’s?).

Hardy’s first wife also likely took umbrage at the widely held belief that Jude’s ensnarement into marriage in Jude the Obscure was inspired by their own courtship. Ouch.

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Thomas Hardy is buried in two different places

Adding to the rather strange tale of Hardy’s first marriage, it is perhaps among the most interesting of Thomas Hardy facts that he is buried in two different places simultaneously.

Upon his death, it was Hardy’s express desire to be buried with his first wife, Emma. You can imagine how his second wife would have felt about that.

However, during his lifetime, Thomas Hardy attained such high status as a writer that the public advocated for him to be interred in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. This is the burial location of many classic English writers, like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Shakespeare.

So, Hardy’s second wife, Florence, agreed to a compromise: Hardy’s heart would be removed and buried with Emma. The rest of his body would be cremated, with the ashes interred at Westminster Abbey.

So, literary pilgrims today can visit Thomas Hardy’s remains in both locations, macabre as it may be.

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We know exactly what was in Thomas Hardy’s pocket when he died

In one of her last letters to Lady Alda, Florence Hardy signed off with the following footnote:

“In the pocket of the last coat T.H. wore I found, after his death, just an old knife, an unfinished poem and a piece of string.”

Florence Hardy

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Some Facts about Jude the Obscure

I will freely admit, I didn’t know much about Jude the Obscure before reading it except that it was truly depressing. But scare, I did not! Not even when I learned that Hardy biographer Claire Tomalin wrote of the novel that it’s “like being hit in the face over and over again” (but yikes).

After some very careful internet searches (trying to avoid spoilers for myself), here’s a brief Jude the Obscure summary:

Jude the Obscure tells the tale of Jude Fawley, an orphan in rural England during the Victorian era. He’s a boy of small means but big dreams. Jude is in the process of educating himself with ambitions to one day attend university when he gets tricked into marriage by a beautiful but scheming young woman, Arabella. Life is all downhill from there.

I don’t know how well you are acquainted with Victorian morals and ideals, but, like Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy’s Jude the Obscure flew in the face of those things the Victorian moralists held most dear: the sanctity of marriage and of the church, the hush hush-edness of all things sex, and the unwavering belief that hard work and thriftiness will win the day (and a happy ending).

By and large, critics of Jude the Obscure were positively vituperative. A review of the novel in the Pall Mall Gazette ran under the headline “Jude the Obscene,” and a prominent church bishop proudly declared that he had thrown his copy into the fire. There’s even a legend (I never found a reliable citation of it) that some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags like your average pornographic magazine.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, published four years prior, received a similar reception. In response to the criticism then, Hardy wrote in his diary,

“If this sort of thing continues, no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to deliberately stand up to be shot at.”

Thomas hardy

After Jude was also lambasted, the Jude the Obscure author was done. In his revised postscript to the 1912 edition of Jude the Obscure, he wrote “the experience completely curing me of further interest in novel-writing.”

Jude, the Obscure was Thomas Hardy’s last novel written and published.

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Well, now that we are pretty well and thoroughly introduced to Jude the Obscure and facts about Thomas Hardy, I think it’s time to get reading!

Pin this to reference throughout our read-along (and beyond).