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Emma Lavinia Gifford (24 November 1840 – 27 November 1912) was an English writer and suffragist. She was also the first wife of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. [1] Early life.
Apr 12, 2022 · One Wednesday morning in November 1912 the ageing Thomas Hardy, entombed by paper and books and increasingly estranged from his wife Emma, finds her dying in her bedroom. Between his speaking to her and taking her in his arms, she has gone.
Mar 2, 2020 · The door of the St Juliot rectory was opened to him by the rector’s sister-in-law, Emma Gifford. The rector himself was in bed with gout and his wife was upstairs at his bedside.
Emma Lavinia Gifford, the youngest but one of a family of five, was born there on 24 November 1840; she was therefore a few months younger than Hardy himself. She herself described her childhood home as ‘a most intellectual one and not only so but one of exquisite home-training and refinement’.
Jul 11, 2020 · On the first day that Hardy arrived at St Juliot church Emma Lavinia Gifford was there to meet him. She was working as a governess and was outgoing and well-educated. She was also strikingly beautiful with bright blue eyes and a mass of auburn hair.
Thomas Hardy was a 29 year old architect who came to survey the building and prepare the design for St Juliot Church and the rectory. It was then he met Emma on 7th March 1870. Emma Gifford was living at the rectory with her sister, the Revd Cadell Holder’s second wife.
Central to Hardy’s dilemma is his chaotic relationship with his childhood sweetheart and first wife, Emma, whom he now shamefully neglects. But Emma is an ardent Christian and a Suffragette, who always says what she is thinking, so her diary is entitled ‘What I Really Think of My Husband’.
Emma Lavinia Gifford was an English writer and suffragist, who was the first wife of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy.
Apr 14, 2022 · The aching love poems Hardy wrote to Emma after her death in 1912 remembered and celebrated this heightened time – but only once it was too late. The question that gripped me was: why did Hardy choose Emma Gifford as his wife in the first place? And how did a marriage that started with such high hopes go so wrong?
Sep 26, 2024 · There—in romantic circumstances later poignantly recalled in prose and verse—he first met the rector’s vivacious sister-in-law, Emma Lavinia Gifford, who became his wife four years later.
