Thomas Hardy has been seriously misinterpreted by his previous biographers, Robert Gittings and Michael Millgate, claims the author of this book, Martin Seymour-Smith. This biography establishes that the popular view of Thomas Hardy as a mean, snobbish, impotent pessimist who couldn't get on with women is wholly inaccurate. Hardy was in fact a shy, sensitive man who cared deeply about his fellow beings, including both his wives. The author also overturns the idea that Hardy was a naive amateur by pointing to his poetry which has been ignored by the critics since it was attacked by T.S. Eliot. Other work by the author includes ''Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Literature'' and the encyclopaedic four volume ''Guide to Modern World Art'', as well as biographies of Robert Graves and Rudyard Kipling.