Thomas Hardy OM (June 2, 1840 – January 11, 1928) is an English novelist and poet.

A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he is influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth.

He is highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

While Hardy writes poetry throughout his life and regards himself primarily as a poet, his first collection is not published until 1898

Initially, therefore, he gains fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry is acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who view him as a mentor.

After his death his poems are lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.

Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually comes to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England

Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, will be listed in the top fifty on the BBC's survey The Big Read.