Thomas Hardy: Everyman Poetry: EVERYMAN POETRY

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was born in Dorset. He left school at sixteen to work as an apprentice for an architect who specialized in church restoration. He made his reputation as a novelist, and it wasn't until after the publication of his last novel, The Well-beloved, in 1897, that he dedicated himself to writing poetry.

Tom Paulin was born in Leeds in 1949 but grew up in Belfast, and was educated at the universities of Hull and Oxford. He has published eight collections of poetry as well as a Selected Poems 1972–1990, two major anthologies, two versions of Greek drama, and several critical works, including The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style and recently, Crusoe's Secret: The Aesthetics of Dissent, The Road to Inver (2004) and Love's Bonfire (2012). Well known for his appearances on the BBC's Newsnight Review, he is also the G. M. Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.