Thomas Hardy was an established English novelist who published a collection of poems called Wessex Poems in 1898. The poems have a personal and romantic tone, as they are set in the fictional landscape of Wessex that inspired many of Hardy's novels. In the poem "Wessex Heights," the speaker stands atop a hill overlooking Wessex and contemplates his life as a poet, feeling misunderstood by mainstream society due to his creative nature and different perspective.

1. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

2. • Wessex Poems and Other Verses , 1898
• Collection of poems by Thomas Hardy
• Called the Wessex Poems
• Readers did not like the poems because Hardy was already an
established novelist by then
• Criticisms against his final novel “Jude the Obscure” affected
Hardy- (Hardy took it as ‘failure’)
• (Hardy was particularly unconventional to that time)
• these poems have a personal tone, and a romantic
mood/tone/setting
• Wessex is a fictional landscape; many of his novels are set in
Wessex.
• He has a sentimental attachment to this landscape
• In real, it is said to be Dorset, where Hardy was born

3. • Wessex Heights
• eight stanza poem
• AABB CCDD
• Has a certain Romanticist sentiment
• Wessex Heights- Wessex Hill
• the speaker says the only places that comforts him is the ‘outside’,
away from the town.
• He is standing on the Wessex Heights and now he can see the
world from the top.
• He is looking out over his own life (a top-down view)
• He contemplates his own life as a poet/creative person
• (he tries to see himself as a poet and hence being different/separate
from the rest)
• About people (the mass) who fail to understand
• His plight in the common everyday world of prudery/pretention/
artificiality/materialistic outlook