Thomas Hardy

No biography by Claire Tomalin can be anything less than interesting and readable, but unfortunately after her superior efforts on the lives of Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys in recent years Tomalin has produced a biography that is neither very needed nor one of her better efforts. Few of the great English writers have a life already better chronicled than Hardy, given the recent excellent biographical study by Millgate (not to mention the two-volume autobiography Hardy himself produced late in life and had published posthumously as a "biography" under the name of his second wife Florence). Tomalin's room to make a new mark here is thus very limited, and she does so by emphasizing his poetry, his relations with his first wife Emma, and by engaging in some very bizarre speculation based on the few areas in Hardy's life where we have very little evidence. Where such speculation was necessary for her lives of Austen and Pepys (given the comparative paucity of supporting materials about their lives, and, in Austen's case, of first-hand documentation of her subject's life), it seems perverse when dealing with a life so thoroughly documented both by Hardy himself and by those who knew them. In one instance, she proposes that because the name of Abel Whittle is THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE is also the name of a Dorset man who was a contemporary of Hardy's mother Jemima, that this might mean that Hardy collaborated with the plot of that novel with his mother--a highly dubious speculation.Tomalin is on much more solid ground when she talks about Hardy's famous deteriorating relationship with his odd lonely wife Emma, who grew to loathe her husband in her later years and to document that hatred in great detail in her journals. Emma Hardy emerges as a much more distinct character in this work than does the droll, controlling Hardy or his frustrated second wife Florence, and again it might have been better had Tomalin stuck more to the facts to give a fuller portrait of her three main figures. The biography is also oddly too short, given the length of Hardy's life: odd details, like his brief meeting with the Prince of Wales in the twenties, whereas his relations with other writers (such as E. M. Forster) are given in barely any of the space they deserve. And at times Tomalin does not seem to have taken her narrative through the requisite drafts she might have: for example, midway through one paragraph she suddenly begins to describe in great detail a vitriolic attack Emma Hardy directed against Hardy's sister Mary without any explanation whatsoever of what prompted the tirade. Hardy's life was too rich, and Tomalin too good of a writer, for this book to be unreadable or uninteresting, but given her achievements with her biographies of Austen, Pepys, Katherine Mansfield, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others this book comes as a big let-down.

Hardy is one of my favorite authors but before reading this I knew little about his personal history and how it informed and shaped his writing. Claire Tomalin has provided a highly readable account of Hardy's life and relationships. Others may rightly criticize this as being derivative and less comprehensive than the earlier biography by Michael Millgate but I haven't read Millgate and found Tomalin's book informative enough for my needs as a general reader looking to gain more insight into Hardy's life and world. In later life as Hardy's marriage deteriorated Tomalin may have chosen to focus on his memories of his wife Emma as an inspiration for some of his later poetry rather than a more detailed account of how strained the relationship had become as others have suggested, but for me that detracted little from the overall enjoyment of reading this otherwise fine biography. Hardy's life spanned the mid to late Victorian era and the early 20th century and Tomalin's writing is very evocative of both the era and the man.

I have been a Hardy fan for many years as I have read all his novels and some of his poems. Although I have read many writings about Hardy, Tomalin paints a vivid portrait of this amazing Victorian writer. The descriptions are so good and you feel as if you could see the person in front of you. One of the main reasons that I think Hardy is amazing is that I tend to enjoy reading dark novels, though not necessarily all dystopia and tragedy. White many believe that Hardy was a pessimist for which he vehemently denied. He insisted that he is a meliorist despite the fact that his imaginations have guided his readers into the abyss almost without hope. If you love Hardy, you will not doubt enjoy reading this book. You will also find out about R.L. Stevenson and Henry James hated Hardy. Should you decide to go against Stevenson and James in Hardy's defense? It's up to you.

The aphorism 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' is a warning any biographer would do well to frame above his or her writing desk. Where information about a biographical subject is scant or ambiguous, there is a temptation to guess at emotions, make spurious links between events and impute imagined motives, for the sake of completeness. The result, as in Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy, is that the subject drifts out of focus; the reader reacts against the mixing of fact and speculation by losing faith in the enterprise. Hardy does not come to life, for me, in this telling. Where did his radicalism come from? What issues/interests deeply moved him? What people inspired/encouraged him (Tomalin makes only slight use of the vast trove of Hardy letters)? The biographer seems to tire of her subject, whereas her interest in his two wives, Emma and Florence, never flags. Her opinions of these two figures seemed pre-formed––tending to sympathy for Emma and antipathy for Florence––and their portraits could easily be detached from the Hardy story. Tomalin is better writing about Hardy's works, especially his poetry, although she sometimes sounds more like a reviewer than a biographer.

Thomas Hardy has been my favorite author ever since I read "The Mayor of Casterbridge" as a sophomore in high school,'way back in 1962. Since that first book, I have read his novels avidly, and with great pleasure, as has my son. This new biography is simply amazing, for it recounts Hardy's full and active life, and even though it shows some of his warts, it gives us a picture of a man who used his life and struggles in his works. Mostly his poetry was generated from his experiences, but many of the characters and scenes of his novels came from his life in the country, and he even used certain buildings in his tales, changing the names, of course. We see here a human Hardy, flawed just as we all are, but striving mightily to give to the world his feelings and thoughts through his works. After reading this book, I appreciate Hardy even more!

Alles bestens

The author has a style that is easy-to-read and not dry at all. I started with The Invisible Woman and was hooked.

Very well written. Not boring or lengthy at all.Perfect for anyone who is interested in Thomas Hardy's life and the background to his work.

A real insight into the smallness and the greatness of TH and his impact on those around him, and they on him…..…. “He wrote honest poems, almost every one shaped and structured with its own thought and its own music. They remind us that he was a fiddler’s son, with music in his blood and bone, who danced to his father’s playing before he learnt to write. This is how I like to think of him, a boy dancing on the stone cottage floor, outside time, oblivious, ecstatic, with his future greatness as unimaginable as the sorrows that came with it.”

A beautifully written account of a man of humble origins who became a shining star in English literature. The account of his relationship with his first wife was tragic, though he seemed to have harvested valuable material from it. An excellent biography.