Thomas Hardy's Dorset

Thomas Hardy celebrated the glorious county of Dorset through his writings. Today our vision of Dorset is very much that fixed by Hardy in novels ranging from Far From the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge to Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Hurriedly produced in instalments for magazines, they were then reworked by Hardy with care and finesse, and turned into world classics. He proceeded to write some of the greatest poetry in the English language. Rodney Legg, the doyen of contemporary Dorset authors, revisits the Dorset heartland of Hardy's Wessex. He charts Thomas Hardy's life and work through the places he knew and the locations he immortalised, from his birthplace at Stinsford, to his old age at Max Gate, with Swanage, Sturminster Newton, Weymouth and Wimborne in between. Fresh facts and anecdotes have come from Moule family papers and visits to Fordington Vicarage. They are brought together in a lively biography which will also be invaluable for those studying Hardy at school or college.