Hardy, Thomas
英國小説家和詩人。鄉村石匠和建築工人之子，在開始寫詩和散文以前曾從事建築工作。從他的第二部小説《綠林蔭下》（1872）開始，他的許多小説都是以假想的英國郡韋塞克斯為背景。《遠離塵囂》（1874）是哈代第一部成功之作，其後的《還鄉》（1878）、《嘉德橋市長》（1886）、《林地居民》（1887）、《黛絲姑娘》（1891）以及《無名的裘德》（1895），全都表達了作者禁慾的悲觀論及他認為不可避免的悲劇生命。它們持續受到歡迎（大多已被拍成電影）多數是由於豐富多樣但容易達到的技巧和它們綜合了浪漫的情節和有説服力的人物。哈代的作品漸漸開始與維多利亞時代的道德觀念發生衝突，《無名的裘德》激起了更大的憤怒和抨擊，使得他不在寫小説。他轉而寫詩，先後出版了《韋塞克斯詩集》（1898）、《今昔詩篇》（1901）和《列王》（1910），這是有關拿破崙戰爭的三卷詩劇。
1840～1928年
Hardy, Thomas
British novelist and poet. Son of a country stonemason and builder, he practiced architecture before beginning to write poetry, then prose. Many of his novels, beginning with his second, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), are set in the imaginary county of Wessex. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), his first success, was followed by The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895), all expressing his stoical pessimism and his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life. Their continuing popularity (many have been filmed) owes much to their richly varied yet accessible style and their combination of romantic plots with convincingly presented characters. Hardy's works became increasingly at odds with Victorian morality, and public indignation at Jude so disgusted him that he wrote no more novels. He returned to poetry with Wessex Poems (1898), Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), and The Dynasts (1910), a huge poetic drama of the Napoleonic Wars.
