Anxious Pleasures
James Wood: Thomas Hardy, 4 January 2007
Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man
by Claire Tomalin.
Viking, 486 pp., £25, October 2006,0 670 91512 2 Show More
by Claire Tomalin.
Viking, 486 pp., £25, October 2006,
“... The Origin of Species of 1859 (it is not clear how early Hardy read this, though he always claimed Darwin as a major influence), Mill, Comte, Marcus Aurelius. A pattern of self-education, ravenous and stringent, had begun. In London for five years from 1862, Hardy attended French classes at King’s College, and went daily for a time to the National Gallery to ... ”