SOURCE: Phelps, William Lyon. “The Novels of Thomas Hardy.” North American Review 190 (1909): 502-14.

In the following excerpt, Phelps notes Hardy's attention to religious architecture, his understanding of pastoral locations and characters in Far from the Madding Crowd and other works, and his juxtaposition of pessimism and humor.

The father of Thomas Hardy wished his son to enter the church, and this object was the remote goal of his early education. At just what period in the boy's mental development Christianity took on the form of a meaningless fable we shall perhaps never know; but after a time he ceased to have even the faith of a grain of mustard seed. This absence of religious belief has proved no obstacle to many another candidate for the Christian ministry, as every habitual churchgoer knows; or as any son of Belial may discover for himself by merely reading the prospectus of...