Thomas Hardy's Wessex

{{short description|Fictional setting for Hardy's novels}}

{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}

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Image:Wessex.png

Thomas Hardy's Wessex is the fictional literary landscape created by the English author Thomas Hardy as the setting for his major novels,{{cite journal | jstor=25120154 | last=Williams | first=Harold | title=The Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy | journal=The North American Review| volume=199 | issue=698 | pages=120–134 | date=January 1914}} located in the south and southwest of England.{{cite journal | jstor=210904 | last=Darby | first=H.C. | title=The Regional Geography of Thomas Hardy's Wessex | journal=Geographical Review | volume=38 | issue=3 | pages=426–443 | date=July 1948| doi=10.2307/210904 | bibcode=1948GeoRv..38..426D }} Hardy named the area "Wessex" after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that existed in this part of that country prior to the unification of England by Æthelstan. Although the places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional name.{{cite web|title=Map of Thomas Hardy's Wessex|url=http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/map-of-thomas-hardys-wessex|publisher=British Library|access-date=25 November 2015}} For example, Hardy's home town of Dorchester is called Casterbridge in his books, notably in The Mayor of Casterbridge.{{cite web|last1=Birchall|first1=Eugene|title=Wessex Place Names|url=http://www.eugenebirchall.co.uk/page80.html|publisher=Wessex Photos|access-date=25 November 2015}}{{cite web|title=An Introduction To Hardy's Wessex|url=http://south-coast-central.co.uk/hardy.htm|publisher=South Coast Central|access-date=25 November 2015}} In an 1895 preface to the 1874 novel Far from the Madding Crowd he described Wessex as "a merely realistic dream country".{{cite web|title=Exploring Thomas Hardy's West Dorset|url=http://www.visit-dorset.com/dbimgs/Hardy%20Country%20leaflet%2005%2006%20-%20web.pdf|publisher=Visit Dorset|access-date=25 November 2015}}

The actual definition of "Hardy's Wessex" varied widely throughout Hardy's career, and was not definitively settled until after he retired from writing novels. When he created the concept of a fictional Wessex, it consisted merely of the small area of Dorset in which Hardy grew up; by the time he wrote Jude the Obscure, the boundaries had extended to include all of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, much of Berkshire, and some of Oxfordshire, with its most north-easterly point being Oxford (renamed "Christminster" in the novel). Cornwall was also referred to but named "Off Wessex". Similarly, the nature and significance of ideas of "Wessex" were developed over a long series of novels through a lengthy period of time. The idea of Wessex plays an important artistic role in Hardy's works (particularly his later novels), assisting the presentation of themes of progress, primitivism, sexuality, religion, nature and naturalism.{{cite journal | jstor=622293 | last=Birch | first=B.P. | title=Wessex, Hardy and the Nature Novelists | journal= Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | volume=6 | issue=3 | pages=348–358 | date=1981| doi=10.2307/622293 | bibcode=1981TrIBG...6..348B }}{{cite journal | jstor=45301021 | last=Farrell | first=John P. | title=Hardy versus Wessex | journal=The Hardy Review | volume=12 | issue=2 | pages=126–147 | date=Autumn 2010| doi=10.1179/193489010X12858552463204 }}{{cite journal | jstor=48568997 | last=Tait | first=Adrian | title=Hardy, Sassoon, and Wessex: The Enduring Appeal of the Immutable | journal=The Thomas Hardy Journal | volume=29 | issue= | pages=140–161 | date=Autumn 2013}} However, this is complicated by the economic role Wessex played in Hardy's career. Considering himself primarily to be a poet, Hardy wrote novels mostly to earn money. Books that could be marketed under the Hardy brand of "Wessex novels" were particularly lucrative, which gave rise to a tendency to sentimentalised, picturesque, populist descriptions of Wessex.{{cite journal | jstor=45274571| last=Bennett | first=Alan | title=Hardy's Wessex in Railway Representations | journal=The Hardy Society Journal | volume=39 | issue= 2| pages=47–60 | date=2008}}

Hardy's resurrection of the name "Wessex" is largely responsible for the popular modern use of the term to describe the south-west region of England (with the exception of Cornwall and arguably Devon). Today, a panoply of organisations take their name from Hardy to describe their relationship to the area. Hardy's conception of Wessex as a separate, cohesive geographical and political identity has proved powerful,{{cite journal | url=https://placesjournal.org/article/the-invention-of-wessex-thomas-hardy-as-architect/ | title=The Invention of Wessex | journal= Places Journal| author=Kester Rattenbury | date=February 2018 | issue=2018 | doi=10.22269/180213 | accessdate=2021-09-20| doi-access=free }} although it was originally created purely as an artistic conceit, and has spawned a lucrative tourist trade, and even a devolutionist Wessex Regionalist Party.