Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English poet and novelist born in Dorset, England. He received some formal education but also taught himself subjects like Latin and Greek with encouragement from friends. He witnessed a public hanging in Dorchester that haunted him for life and inspired his later work. Though he struggled to publish early writings, Hardy went on to write famous novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and poems using forms like lyrics, ballads, and dramatic monologues. The poem "The Walk" reflects on taking a familiar walk alone instead of with an ailing companion as in the past.

1. Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928)
The Walk
Presenter :
Khaleel Nasser
Thomas Hardy, c. 1890.
© Photos.com/Thinkstock

2. Outline
Birth
Education
Poetic Forms
The poem

3. Birth
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born in Higher
Brockhampton, Dorset, near the town of Dorchester.
His father was a builder, and played violin in the local
church and for local dances. His mother, though she
had been brought up in poverty and had only a basic
education, read widely, and encouraged Hardy to do
the same.

4. Education
He attended the village school in Stinsford for a year
(1848), then the British School in Dorchester.
After one year there he moved to a commercial
academy run by Isaac Last, where he was able to study
Latin. He left school in 1856 and was articled to the
architect John Hicks in Dorchester. Here he began to
teach himself Greek, with encouragement from the
dialect poet and philologist William Barnes.

5. Horace Moule
At the same time, he met and was
befriended by Horace Moule, in Dorchester,
who had been educated at Cambridge, and
who now helped him with his studies, and
encouraged him to write poetry.

6. Poetic Forms
•Lyrics
•Ballads
•Dramatic Monologue

7. Witnesses a public execution
Public executions were still carried out in
Dorchester, and he witnessed there the
hanging of a woman, an event which haunted
him for the rest of his life, and which he re-
enacted in his novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles
forty years later.

8. London
In 1862 he moved to London, where he found
employment in the office of the architect Arthur
Bloomfield. He attended the opera, joined a choir
and put himself through a course on the English
poets.

9. First writings
He wrote, mainly poetry, but failed to get
anything published apart from a small satirical
sketch, How I Built Myself a House, which was
published by Chambers’ Journal.

10. The Walk
(1912)
You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,

11. And I went alone ,and I did not mind
Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way;
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning
thence.

12. References
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Hardy
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-walk-30/