Saturday 25th July 2026
Starts 20:00 until 22:00
The Thomas Hardye School, Queen's Ave, Dorchester DT1 2ET

Hardy's Women - Double Bill

Best-selling author Paula Byrne followed by Caroline Butler & Dave Townsend of the Mellstock Band

Date: Saturday, 25th July

Time: 8pm to 10pm

Venue: The Thomas Hardye School Theatre, Thomas Hardye School

Cost: FREE - THS Conference ticket holders

£15 - THS Members

£20 - Non-members

(This event follows the Welcome Dinner for THS Conference Delegates and is included with a Full Conference Ticket)

Part of the 2026 THS Conference & Festival Programme

Tickets on Sale to the General Public

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Paula Byrne: Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses - Talk: 8pm

Thomas Hardy remains one of Britain’s most cherished and widely read authors, his influence on literature and the imagination of his readers unparalleled. Yet, beneath the surface of his novels—where he crafted some of the most compelling and progressive female characters of his time – lies a paradox: Hardy’s own relationships with real women were often fraught with difficulty, disappointment, and emotional complexity.

In her highly innovative book, Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses, acclaimed biographer Paula Byrne offers a fresh perspective on Hardy’s life, exploring it through the lens of the women who shaped him—his formidable mother, devoted sisters, first loves, long-suffering wives, and inspiring muses. Through their eyes, we see the man behind the novels, a figure both enthralled by and at odds with the women around him.

Paula Byrne takes readers on a journey through the defining moments of Hardy’s personal and creative life, from his haunting fascination with a public hanging to the tender yet unfulfilled loves that coloured his poetry, and the realities of nineteenth-century working women who, in many ways, mirrored the resilience of his fictional heroines.

Hardy Women reveals how the strength, struggles, and spirit of the real women in Hardy’s world fueled his literary genius. Without their influence—whether as sources of inspiration or sources of pain—his unforgettable female protagonists might never have come to life. Only by understanding these “Hardy women” can we truly grasp the depth of Hardy’s imagination, his contradictions, and his enduring legacy as both a novelist and a poet.

Paula will talk about what inspired her to research Hardy and the other subjects of her biographies, as well as her life, career and the projects she is currently working on.

The book will be available to purchase on the evening

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Tess's Sisters: Songs of the Working Women of Hardy’s Wessex

Caroline Butler & Dave Townsend of The Mellstock Band Voices, Concertina & Fiddle

Performance - 9.00pm

Thomas Hardy’s deep sympathy with the women of rural Dorset is expressed in so many of his novels, stories and poems. In his youth he played the fiddle for them, listened to their songs, and helped them by writing letters for the illiterate, gaining a unique understanding of their lives and emotions. He often alludes to their singing, and lists or quotes the songs they sang. By a happy accident, in the early 1900s two assiduous folksong scholars were collecting in Dorset from people of Hardy’s generation – the brothers Henry and Robert Hammond, whose informants included many women who had worked the fields, married working men, borne children and lived with the hardships and tragedies of the lives of Tess Durbeyfield, Car’line Aspent, Marty South and countless others as told by Thomas Hardy.

The Hammonds found a rich source of songs among these women, songs remembered from their younger days, passed on in the family, and sung whilst working outside or in the home, to lighten labour or pass the time. This repertoire of women’s songs is not at all what might be expected; there are of course songs of courtship, lost love and the nature of a woman’s lot, but they are equalled by tales of courage and endeavour in military and naval contexts, yarns of trickery and subterfuge, and songs of the realities of country life. A number of the songs are comic and downright bawdy, and many tell their story from a male perspective. There is little complaining about their lives, but plenty of practical guidance on how to make the best of a situation. Like much of the rural singing tradition of the time, a wide range of emotion, tone, style and form is to be found. Tess’s sisters were not oppressed, lamenting females but fully engaged with their local tradition, themselves tradition bearers, enjoying the byplay of different roles and situations through their songs, all leavened with wry wit and good humour.

Tess’s Sisters is a concert of songs and instrumental music, linked by spoken extracts from Hardy’s works and other writings and documents, celebrating the vigorous tradition Hardy knew, bringing to life the songs and stories of the rural working-class women of nineteenth-century Dorset.

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