'The historian of Wessex' - Thomas Hardy's contribution to history

The struggle between content and form is one that has plagued historians fo r more than a century. In many ways, the field of history--and of historiog raphy--as we know it was in its infancy during the Victorian era. concurren t with its development was that of the historical novel. Inspired by the co mmercial and popular success of these novels, many historians attempted to make their accounts read more like fiction. This blurring of the line betwe en history and fiction appears to have given more authority to pure fiction as historical source. Thus it becomes fruitful to examine the works of the se 'unconscious historians' in order to reveal another side to history. Tho mas Hardy, in particular, is an extremely valuable source for the history o f life in southwestern England during the nineteenth century. He achieves t he creation--usually unconscious--of historical documents through the mediu m of fictionalized social commentary. What this does is to create a record of rural society for later generations to examine as both a work of deliber ate fiction and as a historical creation. His novels, informed as they are by his own experiences rather than simply by book-knowledge, is an accurate account of rural life through all of the century's developments, one which provides us with an alternative to academic cultural histories.