Hardy's notebook reveals a little known side of Wessex's most famous author

Within days of the death of Thomas Hardy in 1928, the executors of his estate made a bonfire of his letters and notebooks at his Dorchester home.

Only 12 notebooks survived the blaze. Eleven were literary sources but the twelfth was the unique 'Facts' notebook.

Recording an era

The home Hardy built on the outskirts of Dorchester

Hardy's notebook records details mainly from newspaper stories from 1826 to 1830.

This was a harsh time in Dorset history when the county suffered a severe economic downturn and was seething with discontent.

It seems that Hardy was allowed to borrow bound volumes of the Dorset County Chronicle in order that he could take notes from them.

He would do this at his plush home on the outskirts of Dorchester, Max Gate. This was much different to the desperate poverty his grandparents had known years earlier.

Change of direction

The novels of the young Hardy sometimes evoke a picture of romantic rural harmony.

Dr Greenslade with Hardy's insightful notebook

But his 'Facts' notebook research helped him to move him in a different direction, bravely challenging Victorian conventions of the age.

Dr.Bill Greenslade, the Hardy scholar who has recently unearthed the 'Facts' notebook, says, "It records a culture wholly different from the Victorian age in which he grew up and made his name as a novelist."

"It marks a reshaping of Hardy’s imaginative and fictional worlds… It runs to 220 pages."

News items about husbands who sell their wives, which Hardy had uncovered in his research, were transformed into the dramatic opening chapter of his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Hardy wrote it in 1886, some sixty years after the newspaper stories on which it is based.

A harsh world

In 1887 Hardy began the first draft of what was to become one of the best loved novels in the English language.

Though set in magnificent Wessex landscapes, Tess of the D’Urbervilles made no concession to romantic ideas about the pastoral life.

Tess lived in the harsh world which Hardy continued to research meticulously.

Marital problems

Many of Hardy's books and letters were burnt

Hardy’s wife Emma grew increasingly unhappy about the direction which her husband’s novels were taking.

A committed Anglican, she was becoming more devout as Hardy’s scepticism grew.

This was particularly true when he began work on Jude the Obscure, a work in which the religious doubts of the central character would find uncompromising expression.

Hardy was now turning his back on orthodox religion. His literary message was now a long way from conventional Victorian morality.

Outrage

Many readers of Jude the Obscure reacted with outrage.

The Bishop of Wakefield announced that he had thrown "such garbage" onto his fire.

Retreating to his Max Gate fortress, Hardy withstood the critical onslaught on Jude with as much stoicism as he could muster. But it took its toll on his marriage.

After Jude the Obscure, Hardy never wrote another novel.

Soon afterwards he began the process of destroying the evidence of his past, long before his executors enthusiastically continued the task.

He wrote much poetry in the last thirty years of his life and remains a highly regarded poet and novelist.