Happy Birthday to who…?

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

- From the poem Neutral Tones

 Why the sweet melancholy tones you may ask? Are the bitter winter’s days turning me mournfully sentimental? If the cold continues as it has maybe, but for now the pretty words are instead in celebration of what would be Thomas Hardy’s 171st birthday today.

   

 Sadly the amazing creator of such wonders as Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’Urbervilles left us in 1928, being strangely enough buried in two places, his ashes in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey and his heart,  with his ex wife in Dorset.  Interestingly enough I discovered today that rumour has it that his heart was in fact eaten by a cat before it was buried and a pig’s heart was put in its place, weird or what?

 Another cool thing about the man with one of the world’s most famous moustaches is that the term “cliffhanger” is considered to have originated with the serialized version of one of his stories, (published in Tinsley’s Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873) in which Henry Knight, one of the protagonists, is left literally hanging off a cliff!

 

 So why not snuggle up with a beautiful Victorian tragedy, to celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest authors of his time.  As Kerryn our resident Hardy expert states ‘If you haven’t read Hardy, you haven’t lived’.  

Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - $12.95

Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - $6.95

  1. dymocksbooks posted this