The Return of the Native Resources

A veritable Thomas Hardy clubhouse, with lots of links, neat articles, and handy lists of things like his published works.

VictorianWeb's Hardy overview, with articles divided up by themes and categories, like "Economic Contexts" and "Gender Matters."

Fun website with "this day in literary history" articles. It's worth checking out the whole site, and they have a handful of cool articles on Hardy that link him to some other famous writers, like Thomas Gray.

List of links to academic articles and websites about Hardy and his work.

Cool article about Hardy's poetry and what he was up to later in his long life. Plus some juicy gossip about his marriage – can't go wrong with that.

Hardy was a big fan of music in his novels and his poetry actually inspired a lot of composers later on – you can read all about it here.

As always, PBS's websites are filled with cool facts, articles, and more links than you can shake a stick at. And this is no exception. Get your Hardy groove on here.

Cool project at Kenyon College where they profile the literature and authors of Southwest England, including Hardy's The Return of the Native.

Article, with lots of links, about Egdon Heath, Hardy's fictional landscape, and the musical score by Gustav Holst.

Article on the nineteenth-century literary movements, with a focus on French realism.

Very detailed article about the philosophy of Naturalism.

All about Keats and the Romantic movement.

Great interactive timelines of Hardy's life and works, with lots of pictures and links.

Learn all about Hardy's fictional country of Wessex – this site includes info about his novels, maps, and other archival materials.

Very cool organization, inspired by Hardy, that's trying to preserve the culture and the natural landscape of Dorset, Hardy's actual home county in England.

Information about Hardy and his burial site (plus pictures of it!) are on this website, where you can find the grave of just about anyone famous.

IMDb page for the 1994 adaptation, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Clive Owen.

Article and review of a BBC documentary on Thomas Hardy, which aired in 2008.

A very recent BBC news piece (video and article) about how a museum in Dorset, Hardy's home county, got a really cool collection of Hardy materials.

A clip from of The Mummers performing in the 1994 movie adaptation.

There's a band called Egdon Heath and they have songs on YouTube. Check it out!

A tonal poem by Gustav Holst, inspired by Hardy and composed in 1927.

Excerpt of Alan Rickman's (a.k.a. Professor Snape's) audiobook version of The Return of the Native – nature descriptions never sounded so good. There's also a link of where you can find out more about this audiobook version.

Hilarious Monty Python sketch, in which a crowd gathers to watch Hardy write The Return of the Native and a radio commentator tells us all about it.

These are amazing – go check them out. Seriously, do it. These are all of the original illustrations published with The Return of the Native when it was first serialized in Belgravia magazine in 1878.

Archival photograph from the 1920 anniversary edition of The Return of the Native.

A painting of Thomas Hardy, by Reginald Eves.

A huge gallery with images of places important to Hardy in his life and work. Two thumbs up from us!

Nice photographs of landscapes that are described in Hardy's work.

Cool album of Hardy, with photographs of him throughout his life, including one of him and his bicycle. Yes – it's kind of awesome.