Stay in Thomas Hardy Country
One of the most renowned poets and novelists in English literary history, Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the Dorset hamlet of Higher Bockhampton. He died in 1928 at Max Gate, a house he built for himself and his first wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, in Dorchester, a few miles from his birthplace. 
Hardy’s great novels, including Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure.
Thomas Hardy loved the beautiful Dorset countryside and this is why it features so greatly in his novels. Many of the major themes in his work, the characters and the landscapes they inhabit, are drawn from the Dorset countryside. The county of Dorset has been principally associated with agriculture right up until the late twentieth century, and remains the only county in England without a single mile of motorway!