Thomas Hardy's Wessex is the fictional literary landscape created by the English author

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

as the setting for his major novels, located in the south and

southwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...

of England. 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 Æthelstan or Athelstan (; ; ; ; – 27 October 939) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Modern histori ...

. Although the places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional name. For example, Hardy's home town of Dorchester is called Casterbridge in his books, notably in '' The Mayor of Casterbridge''. In an 1895 preface to the 1874 novel '' Far from the Madding Crowd'' he described Wessex as "a merely realistic dream country". 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 Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

, much of

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

, and some of

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire ( ; abbreviated ''Oxon'') is a ceremonial county in South East England. The county is bordered by Northamptonshire and Warwickshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the east, Berkshire to the south, and Wiltshire and Glouceste ...

, with its most north-easterly point being

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

(renamed "Christminster" in the novel).

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

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. 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. 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, although it was originally created purely as an artistic conceit, and has spawned a lucrative tourist trade, and even a devolutionist Wessex Regionalist Party.

Thomas Hardy's Wessex names

Wessex regions and actual English counties

(Note: The

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

, although today a separate administrative county, was considered to be a part of the county of Hampshire – and thus Upper Wessex – during Thomas Hardy's lifetime. Likewise, Alfredston (

Wantage Wantage () is a historic market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire, England. Although within the boundaries of the Historic counties of England, historic county of Berkshire, it has been a ...

) and the surrounding area in North Wessex was part of Berkshire prior to the 1974 boundary changes but now lies in

.) Outer Wessex is sometimes referred to as Nether Wessex.

Specific places in Thomas Hardy's Wessex

Key to references for the place name table

The abbreviations for Thomas Hardy's novels that are used in the table are as follows: # DR – '' Desperate Remedies'' (1871) # UtGT – ''

Under the Greenwood Tree ''Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School'' is the second published novel by English author Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy's second published novel, and the first of what was to become his seri ...

'' (1872) # PoBE – '' A Pair of Blue Eyes'' (1873) # FftMC – '' Far from the Madding Crowd'' (1874) # HoE – '' The Hand of Ethelberta'' (1876) # RotN – '' The Return of the Native'' (1878) # TM – '' The Trumpet-Major'' (1880) # L – '' A Laodicean'' (1881) # ToaT – '' Two on a Tower'' (1882) # MoC – '' The Mayor of Casterbridge'' (1886) # W – '' The Woodlanders'' (1887) # WT – '' Wessex Tales'' (1888) # TotD – ''

Tess of the d'Urbervilles ''Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman'' is the twelfth published novel by English author Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a Book censorship, censored and Serialized novel, serialised version, published by the British illustrated newsp ...

'' (1891) # JtO – '' Jude the Obscure'' (1895) # WB – '' The Well-Beloved'' (1897) * WP – '' Wessex Poems and Other Verses'' (1898) * LLI – '' Life's Little Ironies '' (1894) * D – '' The Dynasts'' (1904-8)

Table of Wessex place-names, their actual places, and their appearance in Hardy's novels

In art and books

Artists such as Walter Tyndale, Edmund Hort New, Charles George Harper and others, have painted or drawn the landscapes, places and buildings described in Hardy's novels. Their work was used to illustrate books exploring the real-life countryside on which the fictional county of Wessex was based: *B. C. A. Windle & E. H. New (ill.).
The Wessex of Thomas Hardy
' (London, New York, J. Lane, 1902). * Charles G. Harper.
The Hardy country; literary landmarks of the Wessex novels
' (London, A. & C. Black, 1904). *Clive Holland.
Wessex
' (A & C Black, 1906). * Sidney Heath.
The Heart of Wessex
' (Blackie & Son, 1910?). *Charles G. Harper.
Wessex
' ("Beautiful Britain", London: A. & C. Black, 1911). * R. Thurston Hopkins & E. Harries (ill.).
Thomas Hardy's Dorset
' (New York: D. Appleton and co. 1922). *Hermann Lea.
Thomas Hardy's Wessex
' (London, Macmillan and co. 1911). *Ralph Pite, ''Hardy's geography: Wessex and the regional novel''. Palgrave, 2002. *Andrew D. Radford, ''Mapping the Wessex novel: landscape, history and the parochial in British literature'', 1870–1940. (London; New York: Continuum International Pub., 2010. * Walter Tyndale.
Hardy country water-colours
' (A & C Black, 19??). *Barry J Cade.
Thomas Hardy's Locations
' (Casterbridge Publishing Limited 2015) A full colour tourist guide to the places Hardy had in mind when he wrote ''The Mayor of Casterbridge'' and ''Far from the Madding Crowd''.

References

External links

Birgit Plietzsch, "Maps of Wessex" (archived page retrieved from University of St Andrews web page)

Dana Huntley, "Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Country". British Heritage Travel page, 27 January 2021

"Hardy's Wessex", Dorset Guide

"Hardy's Wessex", The Thomas Hardy Society

Ceri Hunter, "Where is Thomas Hardy's Wessex?" The National Trust
{{Thomas Hardy

Wessex The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886. The Anglo-Sa ...

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