Thomas Hardy (June 2, 1840 – January 11, 1928) was an English novelist, poet, and Victorian realist. He was influenced by Romanticism, particularly William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens also had a significant influence on his work. Like Dickens, Hardy was interested in criticizing Victorian society, but Dickens focused more on the rural class. Hardy initially wrote a collection of poems, but his first collection was not published until 1898. He initially gained fame as a novelist rather than a poet through his novels: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). However, during the 1950s, his poetry was considered of a similar quality to his novels, and he had a significant influence on the poetic movement of the 1950s and 1960s, including the poet Philip Larkin. Most of Hardy’s works are set in Wessex, a region of his imagination, in which a group of characters struggle with their fates and life circumstances.