Thomas Hardy

<p><b>The seminal biography of a great poet novelist and sacred figure in English writing Thomas Hardy from bestselling author Clare Tomalin.</b><br><br> <b>'An extraordinary story beautifully told. Tomalin is the most empathetic of biographers' Craig Brown <i>Mail on Sunday</i></b><br><br> Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats.<br><br> In the hands of Whitbread Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin author of the bestselling <i>Charles Dickens: A Life</i> and <i>The Invisible Woman</i> Thomas Hardy comes vividly alive.<br><br> <b>'Another triumph for a biographer who goes from strength to strength' </b>Melvyn Bragg <i>Guardian</i> Books of the Year<br> <b><br> 'Tomalin provides an object lesson in how to write a life' </b><i>Economist<br> </i><br> <b>'A moving story and Tomalin tells it vividly with as great a fund of sympathy and sense as can be imagined' </b><i>Daily Telegraph<br> </i><b><br> 'Skilful and absorbing admirable. The most compelling of life stories' </b><i>Daily Telegraph<br> </i><b><br> 'Hardy emerges as a man full of spirit and gaiety' </b><i>Sunday Times</i></p>