This selection of nine photographic portraits of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) celebrates 175 years his birth. Considered by many to be one of the greatest novelist and poets of the nineteenth-century, Hardy’s writing was both visionary and naturalistic. Many of his novels are set against a rural landscape, often in his native Dorset. Hardy’s major works include Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1896). Since the 1950s, the significance of his poetry has also been recognised.
By W. & D. Downey, carbon print, 1894 x17360
By Francis Henry Hart for Ogden's, cigarette card, 1894 (published circa 1895-1907) x136531
By Clive Holland, glossy bromide print, 1900s x17358
By (Mary) Olive Edis (Mrs Galsworthy), whole-plate autochrome, 1914 x7186
By Thomas Perkins, platinum print, circa 1900 x4616
By an unknown photographer, bromide press print, 1910s x194098
By E.O. Hoppé, hand-pulled photogravure, 1914 P310
Hardy at home at Max Gate in Dorchester, by Lady Ottoline Morrell , snapshot print, late 1924 Ax141845
Hardy with the poet and author, Sir Edmund William Gosse, in the garden of Hardy’s home in Dorchester by William Bellows, cream-toned bromide print, 29 June 1927 x17364