Thomas Hardy (Penguin Books)

Thomas Hardy is the acclaimed biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin. "An extraordinary story, beautifully told. Tomalin is the most empathetic of biographers". (Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday). Paradox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats. In the hands of Whitbread Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin, author of the bestselling books Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, Thomas Hardy the novelist, poet, neglectful husband and mourning lover all come vividly alive. "Another triumph for a biographer who goes from strength to strength". (Melvyn Bragg, Guardian, Books of the Year). "Tomalin provides an object lesson in how to write a life". (Economist). "A moving story, and Tomalin tells it vividly, with as great a fund of sympathy and sense, as can be imagined". (Daily Telegraph). "Skilful and absorbing, admirable. The most compelling of life stories". (Daily Telegraph)."Hardy emerges as a man full of spirit and gaiety". (Sunday Times). Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.