Thomas Hardy's Wessex Thomas Hardy's Wessex The English author Thomas Hardy set all of his major novels in the south and southwest of England. He named the area "Wessex" after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that existed in this part of that country prior to the unification of England by Æthelstan. Although the places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional name. For example, Hardy's home town of Dorchester is called Casterbridge in his books, notably in "The Mayor of Casterbridge". In an 1895 preface to the novel "Far From the Madding Crowd" he described
William Alexander (author) of Vermont, located in Burlington, Vermont. His first published speculative fiction was a seven-page short story, "The Birthday Rooms" ("Zahir", Summer 2005), which earned a 2006 Calvino Prize nomination. Alexander acknowledges that his writing style is influenced by well-known fantasy and mystery authors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Susan Cooper. "Goblin Secrets" has received praise from Alexander's literary heroine Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series, and from Peter S. Beagle, author of "The Last Unicorn", and a starred review from "Kirkus Reviews". Alexander plans a series of novels set in Zombay. After the release