Who was Thomas Hardy?
If you had literature s leading lights James Barrie (author of Peter Pan), John Galsworthy, Edmond Gosse, A. E. Housman, George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, as well as the prime minister of England as your pallbearers (as Thomas Hardy did), you d have to be thought rather important. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) never graduated from college, yet he received honorary doctorates from the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Cambridge, and Oxford. Hardy s five most important novels (in chronological order) are Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure.3 Hardy also wrote over 900 poems and more than 40 short stories. He was considered the greatest writer of English tragedy in his time. Thus, W. M. Parker (editor of Sir Walter Scott s letters) could call Hardy “the greatest imaginative genius of modern times.”4 II. The Biblical Hardy A. Biblical Allusions How many seminary graduates could identify who Ahimaaz
