Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Hardy's body was dismembered after he died. Okay, not exactly—his body was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart was buried next to his wife's body in Dorset. (source)
Hardy definitely knew something about the laborers he wrote about in "The Ruined Maid" and elsewhere. He was born into a working class family. (source)
Writing wasn't the only artistic skill Hardy possessed. He was actually trained as an architect. (source)
Hardy lived a really long time. He was born in 1840 and died in… 1928. He was so old that he was alive when the Titanic sank and wrote a poem about it, which you can read here. (source)