Thomas Hardy's Writing Style

Thomas Hardy was a successful writer of novels, short stories and poetry. While each of these areas could be used to analyze his writing style, the area of choice is his poetry. This is based on two reasons. Firstly, poetry is an area of writing that comes closest to representing the writer's style because of its personal nature. Secondly, it is known that Hardy had to revise many of his short stories to make them acceptable for publication. The short stories then, do not only represent Hardy's own style, they also represents what publications wanted to see. Hardy's poetry is thought to be the best example of Hardy's own individual style, and for this reason the poetry will be considered as a means of investigating his style.

This overall style has been described saying, "His style is rugged, his tone often melancholic, and his humor grim,...
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