Thomas Hardy resource library on the net

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement. The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his fifties, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Hardy claimed poetry as his first love, and published collections until his death in 1928. Although not as well received by his contemporaries as his novels, Hardy's poetry has been applauded considerably in recent years, in part because of the influence on Philip Larkin. However, critically it is still not regarded as highly as his prose.

Most of his poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering. Some, like The Darkling Thrush and An August Midnight, appear as poems about writing poetry, because the nature mentioned in them gives Hardy the inspiration to write those.

The following links and sites are related to Hardy and his work:

1. Thomas Hardy Society (http://www.hardysociety.org)
2. Thomas Hardy on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy)
3. Thomas Hardy Resource Library (http://pages.ripco.net/~mws/hardy.html)
4. Thomas Hardy: An Overview (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/index.html)