'The Historian of Wessex' Thomas Hardy's Contribution to History

Abstract

The struggle between content and form is one that has plagued historians for more than a century. In many ways, the field of history - and of historiography - as we know it was in its infancy during the Victorian era. Concurrent with its development was that of the historical novel. Inspired by the commercial and popular success of these novels, many historians attempted to make their accounts read more like fiction. This blurring of the line between history and fiction appears to have given more authority to pure fiction as historical source. Thus it becomes fruitful to examine the works of these 'unconscious historians' in order to reveal another side to history.Thomas Hardy, in particular, is an extremely valuable source for the history of life in southwestern England during the nineteenth century. He achieves the creation ? usually unconscious ? of historical documents through the medium of fictionalized social commentary. What this does is to create a record of rural society for later generations to examine as both a work of deliberate fiction and as a historical creation. His novels, informed as they are by his own experiences rather than simply by book-knowledge, is an accurate account of rural life through all of the century's developments, one which provides us with an alternative to academic cultural histories.

Keywords:

• Hardy Wessex Historical Fiction British History Rural History Folklore