Monday With Thomas Hardy

In the mist of the Monday blues, we discussed the famous poet, Thomas Hardy. During our first week back, we were told to search on the biographies of all the poets. But as most of us had not brought our laptops, we couldn’t do much discussion and had to depend only on the few who had the information with them.
We learnt that Thomas Hardy was actually an architect who wrote with the intention to earn more money. Hardy started writing poems at the age of 22, after moving to London. As he was unable to find public for his poems, he turned to fiction. His first novel, The Poor Man And The Lady, was written in 1867 but the book was rejected by many publishers. Out of frustration, Thomas Hardy destroyed the manuscript of the fiction.
His first book which was published is Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874. After the success of this book, Hardy devoted himself entirely to writing and produced a series of novels. His most famous book is The Mayor of Casterbridge which was published in 1886.
An important lesson which I learnt today is the acceptance of a written piece. Hardy’s poems and his first novel were rejected because he wrote on themes which were considered sensitive. He only started to gain recognition when he changed his theme to ‘love’ which was something common an acceptable. Here I learnt that when one writes works to be made public, that particular writer must consider the sensitivity of the theme as well as its acceptance in the community.