SOURCE: Rogers, Shannon L. “‘The Historian of Wessex’: Thomas Hardy's Contribution to History.” Rethinking History 5, no. 2 (July 2001): 217-32.

In the following essay, Rogers examines the influence of Hardy on concepts of the history of rural nineteenth-century England.

In 1869, J. R. Green wrote that ‘History … we are told by publishers, is the most unpopular of all branches of literature at the present day, but it is only unpopular because it seems more and more to sever itself from all that can touch the heart of a people’ (Green 1888: xi). Green might just as easily have been commenting on our present day, when the notion of a history book produces countless yawns from prospective readers. And yet, the number of films devoted to historical topics—produced by major Hollywood studios as well as by independents—is growing seemingly exponentially, Renaissance Faires have never been more popular, and historical novels such...