Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Hardy's awesome novels Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure received bad reviews when they first came out (they were too salacious!) which is why he turned to writing poetry in his old age. (Source.)
Hardy was cremated, and his ashes were laid to rest in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. But before he was cremated, his heart was removed. His heart is buried over 100 miles away from his body in Dorchester. Somehow, this seems fitting to us. (Source.)
Good ol' Virginia Woolf loved Hardy's Emma poems. She called Satires of Circumstance, the book in which they originally appeared, "the most remarkable book to appear in my lifetime." (Source.)