Author(s): Martin Seymour-Smith

Literary biography

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Thomas Hardy has been seriously misinterpreted by his previous biographers, Robert Gittings and Michael Millgate, claims the author of this book, Martin Seymour-Smith. This biography establishes that the popular view of Thomas Hardy as a mean, snobbish, impotent pessimist who couldn't get on with women is wholly inaccurate. Hardy was in fact a shy, sensitive man who cared deeply about his fellow beings, including both his wives. The author also overturns the idea that Hardy was a naive amateur by pointing to his poetry which has been ignored by the critics since it was attacked by T.S. Eliot.