black & white frontispiece (Stinford Church drawn by Hardy); titles; contents list; list of illustrations (also drawn by Hardy plus b/w. map of Wessex); untroduction & preface. Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his native South West England.