Sue Bridehead- The Most Tragic Heroine of Thomas Hardy

Abstract

Thomas Hardy was born at upper Bockhampton, near Stinsfor in Dorest in
1840. He went first to the village school and then to a school in Dorchester. At the age
of 16, he was made an apprentice to John Hicks an ecclesiastical architect, but he
continued to study Greek by himself. A Dorset poet, William Barnes encouraged by
Horace Moule. Horace Moule, brilliant son of a vicar, gave great intellectual stimulus
to Thomas Hardy. He went to London in 1862 where he became assistant to Arthur
Bloomfield and worked hard at his profession, still he was not certain whether
literature or architecture should be his life’s work. Though he was interested in poetry,
he started his literary career by publishing a humorous prose sketch. He published his
first novel in 1871 with the title ‘Desperate Remedies’. In 1872 appeared his next novel
‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ and this is the novel which gave Thomas Hardy a solid
base as a novelist. It was followed by ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ a tragedy in which there is
enough of irony. In 1874 Thomas Hardy’s first marriage took place with Emma Lavinia
and in the same year appeared his first popular success ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’
. Henceforth, Thomas Hardy never looked back and between 1878 and 1912, he wrote
nine more novels, three volumes of short stories, three collections of poems and
composed ‘The Dynasts’ – a collection of prose, dramatic lyric and philosophic verse.
He died in 1928.