Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. Against the backdrop of the 'partly real, partly dream-country' of Wessex in which so many of his novels are set, Two on a Tower explores a range of nineteenth-century concerns: sexuality, class, history, Darwinism, science and religion.
Hardy's other novels Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are also published in the Penguin English Library.
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including
Tess of the D'Urbervilles and
Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.
