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
Edith of Wessex read the lives of English saints, and gave information about St Kenelm to his hagiographer, Goscelin. She died at Winchester on 18 December 1075. Matthew Paris records a tradition that her death brought an end to an illness from which she had been suffering at some length. She was buried together with her husband in Westminster Abbey and her funeral was arranged by William. The northern author of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", Manuscript D, reports: Edith of Wessex Edith of Wessex ( 1025 – 18 December 1075) was a Queen of England. Her husband was Edward the Confessor, whom she married