The Three Strangers, and an Imaginative Woman (Dodo Press)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement who was awarded the Order of Merit in 1910. Hardy's novels are set in the "partly-real, partly-dream" county of Wessex, which preserves the name of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that existed in the area. He captured the epoch just before the railways and the industrial revolution changed the English countryside. His works are pessimistic and bitterly ironic, and his writing is rough but capable of immense power. Hardy had an eye for poignant detail, such as the spreading bloodstain on the ceiling at the end of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and little Jude's suicide note; he kept clippings from newspaper reports of real events and used them as details in his novels. In 1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. Hardy claimed poetry as his first love, and published collections until his death in 1928. Although not as well received by his contemporaries as his novels, Hardy's poetry has been applauded considerably in recent years, in part because of the influence on Philip Larkin.