Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
1840～1928. A British novelist, poet. After he engaged in writing novels, he turned to writing poems in his later career. The characteristics of his novel are pessimism for life. The major novels of his are The Return of the Native (1878)、Tess of the d'Ubervilles (1891)、and Jude the Obscure(1895). The famous poetic work of his is The Dynasts (1904~8).
It is difficult to find commons in Hardy's and Lee's works. One of them is sympathy for others. Hardy was worried over abuse on animals. He wrote sympathy for abused animals and hoped that that would lead to social reform.
Hardy was a frequent visitor at Mary Robinson's and Lee met him there.
In The Handling of Words, there is a chapter discussing the style of Hardy. In it, Lee quoted many sentences from his novel Tess and analyzes them. She counted the number of nouns, adjectives, and verbs and compared them to those of other writers such as Kipling. And she pointed out that Hardy uses more adjectives than other writers. And she wrote: "And the very faults of Hardy are probably an expression of his solitary and matchless grandeur of attitude. He belongs to a universe transcending such trifles as Writers and Readers and their little logical ways." (P.241) In the same book, Lee asserted that the popularity of Hardy's works lies in "tragic feeling" and "pantheistic or mythological spirit."（P.231）
Vernon Lee Archive are next to Thomas Hardy Archive at Colby Miller Library in Maine.
