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
Deryni novels Deryni novels The Deryni novels are a series of historical fantasy novels by the American author Katherine Kurtz. The first novel in the series to be published was "Deryni Rising" in 1970, and the most recent, "The King's Deryni", was published in 2014. As of 2016, the series consists of five trilogies, one stand-alone novel, various short stories, and two reference books. Most of the series is set in the land of Gwynedd, one of the fictional Eleven Kingdoms (portions of King Kelson's Bride take place in the rival kingdom of Torenth). Gwynedd itself is a medieval kingdom that roughly