5. Life Of Thomas Hardy

• Hardy cherished growing up in a rural community, attending seasonal occupations and festivals, listening to tale-telling and music-making of parents, relatives, and friends
• Exposed to the exigencies of rural poverty as a child - saw it in his neighbors and friends
• At fifteen, he became apprenticed to John Hicks, a builder in Dorchester
• First experienced formal schooling at the newly-opened village school at age 8 but got excellent teaching between 9-14 by schools conducted by Isaac Glandfield Last in nearby Dorchester
• Moved to London aged 21 as an assistant to architect Arthur Bloomfield.
• Commit full time to literature in summer of 1872
• Expressed remorse for having assisted in some of the radical construction of ancient structures typically practiced by the Victoria church
• Met Emma Gifford in March 1870, married in 1874, despite the wishes of both their families
• February 1896 Emma wrote to his sister Mary, accusing her of trying to create divisions

  'You are a witch like creature'
• Emma and Hardy spent 20 months in small Dorset town of Sturminster Newton - seemed to be the marriage's happiest time.
• Moved into Max Gate in 1885 - villa style house designer by Hardy, built by his father and brother in Dorchester
• Hardy had a new middle-class status in Dorchester, emphasized by his position as a magistrate. Challenged by locals due to childhood.
• Emma felt a sense of personal ostracism in Dorchester, intensified by the open malevolent opposition of Hardy's family. Hardy felt somewhat isolated from Dorchester and was largely ignored by the upper-class families there.
• Met Florence Henniker in 1893, an aspiring novelist in her own right, well-connected, happily married. Relationship acknowledged a lack of a sexual dimension.

  Met Florence Dugdale in 1905, a writer and schoolteacher, who he later married in February 1914. No evidence of adultery. She was mid-twenties, he was 65.
• Developed an infatuation in his mid-eighties with Gertrude Bugler, a young beautiful actress from Dorset, who played leading roles (including Tess) in local dramatizations of his novels