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
Waverley Novels Waverley Novels The Waverley Novels are a long series of novels by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). For nearly a century, they were among the most popular and widely read novels in all of Europe. Because Scott did not publicly acknowledge authorship until 1827, the series takes its name from "Waverley", the first novel of the series released in 1814. The later books bore the words "by the author of "Waverley"" on their title pages. The "Tales of my Landlord" sub-series was not advertised as "by the author of "Waverley"" and thus is not always included as part of the Waverley