The great English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) worked with his second wife, Florence, on this account of his life. It was published under her name, in two separate volumes, after his death. Its origins are as fascinating as the man himself: written in the third person, it was compiled from Hardy's selections from his diaries, notebooks and letters, typed up by Florence and further edited by her after he died. The work provides an invaluable, if idiosyncratic, record of Hardy's life and complex, contradictory character. This is the first volume, published in 1928 and covering the period 1840–91, including Hardy's childhood in Dorset, the publication of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), his marriage in 1874 to Emma Gifford and the building of Max Gate, their home near Dorchester.