Of the three Hardy biographies I have attempted, this is the only one I finished! Clear and informative, yet lyrical and sensitive, Claire Tomalin often writes from the author's personal point of view and manages to convey some of the physical and atmospheric texture of the time and place of Hardy's "Wessex", while shedding light on the day to day transfer of life to art that produces such rich literature.

“A masterful portrait” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) from a Whitbread Award–winning biographer

The novels of Thomas Hardy have a permanent place on every booklover’s shelf, yet little is known about the interior life of the man who wrote them. A believer and an unbeliever, a socialist and a snob, an unhappy husband and a desolate widower, Hardy challenged the sexual and religious conventions of his time in his novels and then abandoned fiction to reestablish himself as a great twentieth-century lyric poet. In this acclaimed new biography, Claire Tomalin, one of today’s preeminent literary biographers, investigates this beloved writer and reveals a figure as rich and complex as his tremendous legacy.

“A fascinating case study in mid-Victorian literary sociology.”
—The New York Times

“Admirable . . . One returns to Thomas Hardy with renewed pleasure and surprise.”
—The New York Review of Books

“Tomalin brings . . . the skills of an experienced and accomplished biographer . . . and the confidence of a deeply informed literary critic.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

Claire Tomalin is the author of seven highly acclaimed biographies, including the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self.

Imprint: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Distributor: Penguin Group USA, Inc
Publication Date: 01-29-2008
Pages: 512
Measurements: 8.38in X 5.58in X 1.11in X 1.03lb