Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper Bockhampton, in Dorset. He was the eldest of four children of Thomas Hardy, a builder and master mason, and Jemima Hand. Both parents were from longestablished Dorset families. The younger Thomas attended school from 1848-1856, entering the work world at age 16 as an apprentice to an architect and church restorer in Dorchester. In 1862 Hardy moved to London, where he worked for an architectural firm and became immersed in a program of self-education. He regularly attended church, both mainstream Anglican services and nonconformist evangelical services, and even considered entering the university, with an eye toward a career in the church. Religious doubts put an end to this scheme, and Hardy resumed his former employment in Dorchester in 1867. He meanwhile pursued his writing, both poetry and fiction, publishing his first novel, Desperate Remedies, in 1871. Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874, and the couple lived in London and Dorset before settling in 1885 at Max Gate—in a house that Hardy designed—on the outskirts of Dorchester. He was living here when Jude the Obscure, his fourteenth novel, appeared in book form in 1895.
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