Jude the Obscure

Hardy's final novel ‘Jude the Obscure’ began as a serial publication in December 1894, before being published in book form the following year. The great tale of ‘Jude the Obscure,’ offers some of the author’s most valuable insights into the issues of class, religion, and marriage. It tells the story of Jude Fawley, an aspiring academic from the working-class who falls in love with Sue, his cousin. Finding that their relationship only incurs the wrath and judgment of their community, Jude and Sue experience ostracism and tragedy in this highly controversial Victorian novel. The novel sent shockwaves of indignation rolling across Victorian England.
Having been harshly criticized in its day for its scandalous portrayals, ‘Jude the Obscure’ has since been recognized as one of Hardy’s finest and most intricate works. The novel is the most powerful expression of Hardy's philosophy, and a profound exploration of man's essential loneliness. It caused outrage when it was published in 1895 and, as a result, was the last novel Hardy ever wrote.

Thomas Hardy was born in a cottage in Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, on 2 June 1840. He was educated locally and at sixteen was articled to a Dorchester architect, John Hicks. In 1862 he moved to London and found employment with another architect, Arthur Blomfield. He now began to write poetry and published an essay. By 1867 he had returned to Dorset to work as Hicks's assistant and began his first (unpublished) novel, The Poor Man and the Lady.
On an architectural visit to St Juliot in Cornwall in 1870 he met his first wife, Emma Gifford. Before their marriage in 1874 he had published four novels and was earning his living as a writer. More novels followed and in 1878 the Hardys moved from Dorset to the London literary scene. But in 1885, after building his house at Max Gate near Dorchester, Hardy again returned to Dorset. He then produced most of his major novels: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Amidst the controversy caused by Jude the Obscure, he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems and his epic drama in verse, The Dynasts.
After a long and bitter estrangement, Emma Hardy died at Max Gate in 1912. Paradoxically, the event triggered some of Hardy's finest love poetry. In 1914, however, he married Florence Dugdale, a close friend for several years. In 1910 he had been awarded the Order of Merit and was recognized, even revered, as the major literary figure of the time. He died on 11 January 1928. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart at Stinsford in Dorset.