Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.
Original title page of Jude the Obscure
Photochrom of the High Street, Oxford, 1890–1900
Thomas Hardy 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.
Hardy between about 1910 and 1915
"The Hardy Tree", a Great Tree of London in Old St Pancras churchyard in London, growing between gravestones moved while Hardy was working there. The tree fell in December 2022.
Max Gate in 2015
Florence Hardy at the seashore, 1915