Hardy’s home and the surrounding districts played an important
role in his literary career. The region was agricultural, and there
were monuments of the past, that is Saxon and Roman ruins and
the great boulders of Stonehenge, which reminded of the prehis
toric times, before the Norman invasion of 1066
First, Hardy aimed his fiction at serial publication in maga
zines, where it would most quickly pay the bills. Not forgetting
an earlier dream, he resolved to keep his tales “as near to poetry
in their subject as the conditions would allow.” The emotional
power of Hardy’s fiction disturbed readers from the start. His
first success, “Far from the Madding Crowd” (1874). was fol
lowed by “The Return o f the Native” (1878), “The Mayor of
Casterbridge”(1885), and “Tess of the D’Urber/illes” (1891).
Hardy wrote about the Dorset country-side he knew well and
called it Wessex (the name o f the Anglo-Saxon kingdom once
located there). He wrote about agrarian working peopic, milk
maids, stonecutters, and shepherds. Hardy's rejection o f middle-
class moral values disturbed and shocked some readers, but as
time passed, his novels gained in popularity and prestige. An
architect by profession, he gave to his novels a design that was
architectural, employing each circumstance in the narrative to
one accumulated effect. The final impression was cne of a malign.
It was fate, functioning in men’s lives, corrupting their possibili
ties of happiness, and beckoning them towards tragedy. While he
saw life thus as cruel and purposeless, he did not remain a de
tached spectator. He has pity for the puppets o f Destiny, and it is
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