{"id":34598,"date":"2026-05-12T12:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/34598\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:12:11","slug":"the-biggest-ever-collection-of-thomas-hardys-works-is-going-on-show-in-the-uk-and-it-will-be-free-to-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/34598\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biggest Ever Collection of Thomas Hardy\u2019s Works is Going on Show in the UK \u2013 and It Will Be Free to Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s greatest writers of all time hail from all over country. To discover what made Charles Dickens tick, you go to London<\/a>\u00a0or Kent<\/a>. To see the landscapes that inspired William Wordsworth, ramble in\u00a0the Lake District<\/a>.\u00a0Head to Bath<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0walk in the footsteps of Jane Austen and explore Yorshire to see\u00a0what sparked the imaginations of the Bront\u00ebs.\u00a0If you\u2019re a particular fan of the words of Thomas Hardy, you go to Dorset.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Born near Dorchester in 1840, Thomas Hardy went on to create magnificent pieces of literature, from poems like The Darkling Thrush to classic novels like Tess of the D\u2019Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure. It\u2019s believed that Dorset was the primary inspiration behind his imaginary territory of\u00a0Wessex.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, nearly 100 years after his death, you can travel to Dorset to see\u00a0largest ever Thomas Hardy archive… for free. After a two-year-long cataloging project, this month the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester has made the archive accessible to the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Thomas
\nPhotograph: Dorset Museum & Art Gallery, held by Dorset History Centre <\/p>\n

The archive is made of more than 100 boxes that contain notebooks, photographs and over 5,000 letters written by Hardy.\u00a0On top of all of that, there\u2019s\u00a0school exercise books, architectural drawings, sketches and his family\u2019s music books alongside letters from his contemporaries, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Siegfried Sassoon, J.M Barrie and Virginia Woolf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ruth Burton at Dorset History Centre said: \u2018The letters are full of news and opinions on literature and the historic events and movements of the day – including World War One, animal rights and women’s suffrage – making them a wonderful resource.\u2019<\/p>\n

She added that the collection shows how \u2018deeply Dorset shaped Hardy’s imagination\u2019 and that it will \u2018will inspire new generations of readers and researchers to engage with some of the county’s most significant cultural heritage\u2019.<\/p>\n

To see the extensive collection with your own eyes, you\u2019ll have to book an appointment at the Dorset History Centre. Much of it is also available to view online here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Did you see that the creator of \u2018Peaky Blinders\u2019 is making a new Oasis documentary?<\/a><\/p>\n

Plus:\u00a0A prehistoric British building is being recreated and turned into a tourist attraction<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stay in the loop:\u00a0sign up to our free Time Out UK newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for the latest UK news and the best stuff happening across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s greatest writers of all time hail from all over country. To discover what made Charles Dickens tick,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[248,249,247,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-34598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-categories-things-to-do","9":"tag-news-city-life","10":"tag-things-to-do","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116561546029888238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}