Books with title Thomas Hardy

To the traveller who takes an interest in the place he visits, Dorset will prove one of the most highly attractive counties in the kingdom. To the book-lover it is a land of grand adventure, for here is the centre of the Hardy Country, the home of the Wessex Novels. It is in Dorset that ancient superstitions and curious old customs yet linger, and strange beliefs from ages long ago still survive. It is good to find that the kindly hospitality, the shrewd wisdom and dry wit, for which the peasantry in Thomas Hardy's novels are famous, have not been weakened by foolish folk who seek to be "up to date." Old drinks and dishes that represent those of our forefathers, and the mellow sound of the speech that was so dear to Raleigh and Drake, are things that are now giving way to the new order of life, alas! but they are dying hard, as behoves things which are immemorial and sacramental. The rustics are perhaps not quite so witty as they are in Hardy's The Return of the Native and other novels, but they possess the robust forms and simple manners of a fine old agricultural people, while they show their spirit by the proverb, "I will not want when I have, nor, by Gor, when I ha'n't, too!"