Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) is perhaps best known for his memorable novels, such as The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. However, Hardy's first love was poetry, and today he is recognized as one of the great forerunners of modern Realism in verse. Hardy was born in the English west country, the "Wessex" of his novels. Under the influence of his father, a building constructor, he became as a young man apprenticed to a local church architect. Though he showed great talent for architecture, he gave his free time to writing. In 1871, he published his first novel, Desperate Remedies, and in 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd, which won him much acclaim. Over the years, Hardy reached a wide reading public with his novels about characters buffeted by terrible fates. However, he also faced criticism and censorship because of his sympathetic treatment of characters who were driven by circumstances to commit terrible deeds. Financially secure and disgusted with the censorship leveled at his novels, he turned in the later part of his career to his original love, writing poetry. Both Hardy's novels and his poems present a pessimistic view of life, but Hardy himself argued that he was a "meliorist," someone who thinks that the human condition can be improved. His writing about tragic circumstances and lives was intended to arouse human sympathy and compassion by showing readers how people come to be as they are. Hardy is buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. His heart, however, is buried in the churchyard at Stinsford in the west country, near Dorchester.