Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet. The phrase life"s little ironies" is now proverbial, was coined by Hardy as the title for his third volume of short stories. The tales and sketches reflect many of the strengths and themes of the great novels of Hardy. The collection displays the whole range of Hardy"s art as a writer of fiction, from fantasy to uncompromising realism, and from the loving re-creation of a vanished rural world to the repressions of fin de siecle bourgeois life.