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
Kate Ellis (author) Kate Ellis (author) Kate Ellis is a British author of crime fiction, best known for a series of detective novels, which blends history with mystery, featuring policeman Wesley Peterson. Ellis' first novel, "The Merchant's House", published in 1998, received positive reviews and was chosen as one of the ten best summer reads by "Woman's Weekly". She has since written 21 more novels in this series, many to critical acclaim. Ellis has also written five novels set in Yorkshire as part of the Joe Plantagenet series and an historical crime novel, "The Devil's Priest", which is set in 16th century Liverpool.