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
House of Wessex of the House of Wessex in the female line, something that contemporary English commentators noted with approval. For a family tree of the House of Wessex from Cerdic down to the children of King Alfred the Great, see: A continuation into the 10th and 11th centuries can be found at A coat of arms was attributed by medieval heralds to the Kings of Wessex. These arms appear in a manuscript of the thirteenth century, and are blazoned as "Azure, a cross patonce" (sometimes a "cross fleury" or "cross moline") "between four martlets Or". The assigning of arms to the West