Thomas Hardy was one of the great Victorian novelists and one of the great twentieth-century poets. This is the first of the many paradoxes he presents. A believer and an unbeliever, a socialist and a snob, an unhappy husband and a desolate widower, Hardy was the son of a village builder who challenged the sexual and religious conventions of his time yet ultimately won the affection and support of the English aristocracy. In this acclaimed new biography, one of today's preeminent literary biographers reveals a figure as rich and complex as his tremendous legacy. Book jacket.