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
Roger Taylor (author) Roger Taylor (author) Roger Taylor is an English fiction and non-fiction author. He was born in Heywood, Lancashire, and now lives in the Wirral. He is a chartered civil and structural engineer, a pistol, rifle and shotgun shooter, aikido instructor/student, and an enthusiastic but inaccurate piano player. He is the author of thirteen epic fantasy novels and a book on martial arts philosophy. The first four books are collectively known as the Chronicles of Hawklan, the following seven are set in the same world following the events in the Chronicles, and the twelfth, 'The Return of the Sword', is the