{"product_id":"thomas-hardy-9780143112877","title":"Thomas Hardy","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"A masterful portrait\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e) from a Whitbread Award-winning biographer, and author of \u003ci\u003eA Life of My Own\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The novels of Thomas Hardy have a permanent place on every booklover's shelf, yet little is known about the interior life of the man who wrote them. A believer and an unbeliever, a socialist and a snob, an unhappy husband and a desolate widower, Hardy challenged the sexual and religious conventions of his time in his novels and then abandoned fiction to reestablish himself as a great twentieth-century lyric poet. In this acclaimed new biography, Claire Tomalin, one of today's preeminent literary biographers, investigates this beloved writer and reveals a figure as rich and complex as his tremendous legacy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eClaire Tomalin\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including \u003ci\u003eThomas Hardy\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSamuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. She has previously won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Whitbread Biography Award. She has also written her own biography, \u003ci\u003eA Life of My Own\u003c\/i\u003e. Educated at Cambridge University, she served as literary editor of the \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eSunday Times \u003c\/i\u003e(London). Claire Tomalin lives in London and is married to the playwright Michael Frayn.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50923912954130,"sku":"9780143112877","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_ff41c6e2-7977-4ff1-9af0-e3960b9bc00e.jpg?v=1738964807","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/thomas-hardy-9780143112877","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}