Hardy abandons fiction

After all, no one reads poetry. He can be left alone.

clipped from www.todayinliterature.com Judging Jude and Hardy On this day in 1895 Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was published. Early critics called it "Jude the Obscene," and dubbed its author "Hardy the Degenerate." Dismayed by such criticism, and mindful of what had been said about his earlier books, Hardy thereafter wrote only poetry: "If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone."