His ashes were placed in Westminster Abbey, and his heart was buried, as he had requested, in the church at Stinsford, near his birthplace. For the remaining 33 years of his life Hardy published only verse. He was living here when Jude the Obscure, his fourteenth novel, appeared in book form in 1895. Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874, and the couple lived in London and Dorset before settling in 1885 at Max Gate-in a house that Hardy designed-on the outskirts of Dorchester. He meanwhile pursued his writing, both poetry and fiction, publishing his first novel, Desperate Remedies, in 1871. Religious doubts put an end to this scheme, and Hardy resumed his former employment in Dorchester in 1867. He regularly attended church, both mainstream Anglican services and nonconformist evangelical services, and even considered entering the university, with an eye toward a career in the church. In 1862 Hardy moved to London, where he worked for an architectural firm and became immersed in a program of self-education. The younger Thomas attended school from 1848-1856, entering the work world at age 16 as an apprentice to an architect and church restorer in Dorchester. Both parents were from long-established Dorset families. He was the eldest of four children of Thomas Hardy, a builder and master mason, and Jemima Hand. Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper Bockhampton, in Dorset. Jude Fawley, an orphan from a remote rural village in Dorsetshire, experiences professional and personal frustrations that lead to the extinction of his dreams.Įvents in History at the Time of the Novel A novel set in southwest England from about 1855-85 published in serial form in Harper’s Magazine in 1894-95, in book form in 1895.

Jude the obscure