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Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his native South West England.

While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.

Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in south-west and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Early life
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton (then Upper Bockhampton), a hamlet in the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, where his father Thomas (1811–1892) worked as a stonemason and local builder. His parents had married at Melbury Osmond on 22 December 1839. His mother, Jemima (née Hand; 1813–1904), was well read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at the age of eight. For several years he attended Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester, where he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential.

Because Hardy's family lacked the means for a university education, his formal education ended at the age of sixteen, when he became apprenticed to James Hicks, a local architect. He worked on the design of the new church at nearby Athelhampton, situated just opposite Athelhampton House where he painted a watercolour of the Tudor gatehouse while visiting his father, who was repairing the masonry of the dovecote.

He moved to London in 1862 where he enrolled as a student at King's College London. He won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association. He joined Arthur Blomfield's practice as assistant architect in April 1862 and worked with Blomfield on Christ Church, East Sheen Richmond, London where the tower collapsed in 1863, and All Saints' parish church in Windsor, Berkshire, in 1862–64. A reredos, possibly designed by Hardy, was discovered behind panelling at All Saints' in August 2016. In the mid-1860s, Hardy was in charge of the excavation of part of the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church before its destruction when the Midland Railway was extended to a new terminus at St Pancras.

Hardy never felt at home in London, because he was acutely conscious of class divisions and his social inferiority. During this time he became interested in social reform and the works of John Stuart Mill. He was introduced by his Dorset friend Horace Moule to the works of Charles Fourier and Auguste Comte. Mill's essay On Liberty was one of Hardy's cures for despair, and in 1924 he declared that "my pages show harmony of view with" Mill. He was also attracted to Matthew Arnold's and Leslie Stephen's ideal of the urbane liberal freethinker.

After five years, concerned about his health, he returned to Dorset, settling in Weymouth, and decided to dedicate himself to writing.

Personal
In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall, Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Gifford, whom he married in Kensington in late 1874, renting St David's Villa, Southborough (now Surbiton) for a year. In 1885 Thomas and his wife moved into Max Gate in Dorchester, a house designed by Hardy and built by his brother. Although they became estranged, Emma's death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him and after her death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship; his Poems 1912–13 reflect upon her death. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. He remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry.

In his later years, he kept a Wire Fox Terrier named Wessex, who was notoriously ill-tempered. Wessex's grave stone can be found on the Max Gate grounds.

In 1910, Hardy had been appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was also for the first time nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was nominated again for the prize 11 years later and received a total of 25 nominations until 1927. He was at least once, in 1923, one of the final candidates for the prize, but was not awarded.

Hardy and the theatre
Hardy's interest in the theatre dated from the 1860s. He corresponded with various would-be adapters over the years, including Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 and Jack Grein and Charles Jarvis in the same decade. Neither adaptation came to fruition, but Hardy showed he was potentially enthusiastic about such a project. One play that was performed, however, caused him a certain amount of pain. His experience of the controversy and lukewarm critical reception that had surrounded his and Comyns Carr's adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1882 left him wary of the damage that adaptations could do to his literary reputation. So, in 1908, he so readily and enthusiastically became involved with a local amateur group, at the time known as the Dorchester Dramatic and Debating Society, but that would become the Hardy Players. His reservations about adaptations of his novels meant he was initially at some pains to disguise his involvement in the play. However, the international success of the play, The Trumpet Major, led to a long and successful collaboration between Hardy and the Players over the remaining years of his life. Indeed, his play The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse (1923) was written to be performed by the Hardy Players.

Later years

From the 1880s, Hardy became increasingly involved in campaigns to save ancient buildings from destruction, or destructive modernisation, and he became an early member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. His correspondence refers to his unsuccessful efforts to prevent major alterations to the parish church at Puddletown, close to his home at Max Gate. He became a frequent visitor at Athelhampton House, which he knew from his teenage years, and in his letters he encouraged the owner, Alfred Cart de Lafontaine, to conduct the restoration of that building in a sensitive way.

In 1914, Hardy was one of fifty-three leading British authors—including H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—who signed their names to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War. This manifesto declared that the German invasion of Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war." Hardy was horrified by the destruction caused by the war, pondering that "I do not think a world in which such fiendishness is possible to be worth the saving" and "better to let western 'civilization' perish, and let the black and yellow races have a chance." He wrote to John Galsworthy that "the exchange of international thought is the only possible salvation for the world."

Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on 11 January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed; the cause of death was cited, on his death certificate, as "cardiac syncope", with "old age" given as a contributory factor. His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. His family and friends concurred; however, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner. Hardy's estate at death was valued at £95,418.

Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors of his estate burnt his letters and notebooks, but twelve notebooks survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of newspaper stories from the 1820s, and research into these has provided insight into how Hardy used them in his works. The opening chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge, for example, written in 1886, was based on press reports of wife-selling. In the year of his death Mrs Hardy published The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1841–1891, compiled largely from contemporary notes, letters, diaries and biographical memoranda, as well as from oral information in conversations extending over many years.

Hardy's work was admired by many younger writers, including D. H. Lawrence, John Cowper Powys and Virginia Woolf. In his autobiography Good-Bye to All That (1929), Robert Graves recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s and how Hardy received him and his new wife warmly, and was encouraging about his work.

Hardy's birthplace in Bockhampton and his house Max Gate, both in Dorchester, are owned by the National Trust.

Novels

Hardy's first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher. He then showed it to his mentor and friend, the Victorian poet and novelist George Meredith, who felt that The Poor Man and the Lady would be too politically controversial and might damage Hardy's ability to publish in the future. So Hardy followed his advice and he did not try further to publish it. He subsequently destroyed the manuscript, but used some of the ideas in his later work. In his recollections in Life and Work, Hardy described the book as "socialistic, not to say revolutionary; yet not argumentatively so."

After he abandoned his first novel, Hardy wrote two new ones that he hoped would have more commercial appeal, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), both of which were published anonymously; it was while working on the latter that he met Emma Gifford, who would become his wife. In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes, a novel drawing on Hardy's courtship of Emma, was published under his own name. A plot device popularised by Charles Dickens, the term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated with the serialised version of A Pair of Blue Eyes (published in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873) in which Henry Knight, one of the protagonists, is left literally hanging off a cliff. Elements of Hardy's fiction reflect the influence of the commercially successful sensation fiction of the 1860s, particularly the legal complications in novels such as Desperate Remedies (1871), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and Two on a Tower (1882).

In Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy first introduced the idea of calling the region in the west of England, where his novels are set, Wessex. Wessex had been the name of an early Saxon kingdom, in approximately the same part of England. Far from the Madding Crowd was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next 25 years, Hardy produced 10 more novels.

Subsequently, Hardy moved from London to Yeovil, and then to Sturminster Newton, where he wrote The Return of the Native (1878). In 1880, Hardy published his only historical novel, The Trumpet-Major. A further move to Wimborne saw Hardy write Two on a Tower, published in 1882, a romance story set in the world of astronomy. Then in 1885, they moved for the last time, to Max Gate, a house outside Dorchester designed by Hardy and built by his brother. There he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), the last of which attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman", and initially it was refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented, was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle classes.

Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with an even stronger negative response from the Victorian public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion and marriage. Its apparent attack on the institution of marriage caused strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, and Walsham How, the Bishop of Wakefield, is reputed to have burnt his copy. In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident as part of the career of the book: "After these [hostile] verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop – probably in his despair at not being able to burn me". Despite this, Hardy had become a celebrity by the 1900s, but some argue that he gave up writing novels because of the criticism of both Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. The Well-Beloved, first serialised in 1892, was published in 1897.

Literary themes
Considered a Victorian realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England, and criticises those beliefs, especially those relating to marriage, education and religion, that limited people's lives and caused unhappiness. Such unhappiness, and the suffering it brings, is seen by poet Philip Larkin as central in Hardy's works:

"What is the intensely maturing experience of which Hardy's modern man is most sensible? In my view it is suffering, or sadness, and extended consideration of the centrality of suffering in Hardy's work should be the first duty of the true critic for which the work is still waiting [...] Any approach to his work, as to any writer's work, must seek first of all to determine what element is peculiarly his, which imaginative note he strikes most plangently, and to deny that in this case it is the sometimes gentle, sometimes ironic, sometimes bitter but always passive apprehension of suffering is, I think, wrong-headed."

In Two on a Tower, for example, Hardy takes a stand against these rules of society with a story of love that crosses the boundaries of class. The reader is forced to reconsider the conventions set up by society for the relationships between men and women. Nineteenth-century society had conventions, which were enforced. In this novel Swithin St Cleeve's idealism pits him against such contemporary social constraints.

"In a novel structured around contrasts, the main opposition is between Swithin St Cleeve and Lady Viviette Constantine, who are presented as binary figures in a series of ways: aristocratic and lower class, youthful and mature, single and married, fair and dark, religious and agnostic...she [Lady Viviette Constantine] is also deeply conventional, absurdly wishing to conceal their marriage until Swithin has achieved social status through his scientific work, which gives rise to uncontrolled ironies and tragic-comic misunderstandings."

Fate or chance is another important theme. Hardy's characters often encounter crossroads on a journey, a junction that offers alternative physical destinations but which is also symbolic of a point of opportunity and transition, further suggesting that fate is at work. Far from the Madding Crowd is an example of a novel in which chance has a major role: "Had Bathsheba not sent the valentine, had Fanny not missed her wedding, for example, the story would have taken an entirely different path." Indeed, Hardy's main characters often seem to be held in fate's overwhelming grip.

Poetry
In 1898, Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. While some suggest that Hardy gave up writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, the poet C. H. Sisson calls this "hypothesis" "superficial and absurd". In the twentieth century Hardy published only poetry.

Thomas Hardy published Poems of the Past and the Present in 1901, which contains "The Darkling Thrush" (originally titled "The Century's End"), one of his best known poems about the turn of the century.

Thomas Hardy wrote in a great variety of poetic forms, including lyrics, ballads, satire, dramatic monologues and dialogue, as well as a three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts (1904–08), and though in some ways a very traditional poet, because he was influenced by folksong and ballads, he "was never conventional," and "persistently experiment[ed] with different, often invented, stanza forms and metres," and made use of "rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction".

Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both the Boer Wars and World War I, including "Drummer Hodge", "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" and "The Man He Killed"; his work had a profound influence on other war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon. Hardy in these poems often used the viewpoint of ordinary soldiers and their colloquial speech. A theme in the Wessex Poems is the long shadow that the Napoleonic Wars cast over the 19th century, as seen, for example, in "The Sergeant's Song" and "Leipzig". The Napoleonic War is the subject of The Dynasts.

Some of Hardy's more famous poems are from Poems 1912–13, which later became part of Satires of Circumstance (1914), written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. They had been estranged for 20 years, and these lyric poems express deeply felt "regret and remorse". Poems like "After a Journey", "The Voice" and others from this collection "are by general consent regarded as the peak of his poetic achievement". In a 2007 biography on Hardy, Claire Tomalin argues that Hardy became a truly great English poet after the death of his first wife Emma, beginning with these elegies, which she describes as among "the finest and strangest celebrations of the dead in English poetry."

Many of Hardy's poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and "the perversity of fate", but the best of them present these themes with "a carefully controlled elegiac feeling". Irony is an important element in a number of Hardy's poems, including "The Man He Killed" and "Are You Digging on My Grave". A few of Hardy's poems, such as "The Blinded Bird", a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting, reflect his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and his membership in the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A number of notable English composers, including Gerald Finzi, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Gustav Holst, set poems by Hardy to music. Holst also wrote the orchestral tone poem Egdon Heath: A Homage to Thomas Hardy in 1927.

Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels had been, Hardy is now recognised as one of the great poets of the 20th century, and his verse had a profound influence on later writers, including Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin. Larkin included 27 poems by Hardy compared with only nine by T. S. Eliot in his edition of The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse in 1973. There were fewer poems by W. B. Yeats. Poet-critic Donald Davie's Thomas Hardy and English Poetry considers Hardy's contribution to ongoing poetic tradition at length and in creative depth. Davie's friend Thom Gunn also wrote on Hardy and acknowledged his stature and example.

Religious beliefs
Hardy's family was Anglican, but not especially devout. He was baptised at the age of five weeks and attended church, where his father and uncle contributed to music. He did not attend the local Church of England school, instead being sent to Mr Last's school, three miles away. As a young adult, he befriended Henry R. Bastow (a Plymouth Brethren man), who also worked as a pupil architect, and who was preparing for adult baptism in the Baptist Church. Hardy flirted with conversion, but decided against it. Bastow went to Australia and maintained a long correspondence with Hardy, but eventually Hardy tired of these exchanges and the correspondence ceased. This concluded Hardy's links with the Baptists.

The irony and struggles of life, coupled with his naturally curious mind, led him to question the traditional Christian view of God: "The Christian God – the external personality – has been replaced by the intelligence of the First Cause...the replacement of the old concept of God as all-powerful by a new concept of universal consciousness. The 'tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous' is replaced by the 'unconscious will of the Universe' which progressively grows aware of itself and 'ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic'."

Scholars have debated Hardy's religious leanings for years, often unable to reach a consensus. Once, when asked in correspondence by a clergyman, Dr. A. B. Grosart, about the question of reconciling the horrors of human and animal life with "the absolute goodness and non-limitation of God", Hardy replied,

"Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics."

Hardy frequently conceived of, and wrote about, supernatural forces, particularly those that control the universe through indifference or caprice, a force he called The Immanent Will. He also showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits. Even so, he retained a strong emotional attachment to the Christian liturgy and church rituals, particularly as manifested in rural communities, that had been such a formative influence in his early years, and Biblical references can be found woven throughout many of Hardy's novels. Hardy's friends during his apprenticeship to John Hicks included Horace Moule (one of the eight sons of Henry Moule) and the poet William Barnes, both ministers of religion. Moule remained a close friend of Hardy's for the rest of his life, and introduced him to new scientific findings that cast doubt on literal interpretations of the Bible, such as those of Gideon Mantell. Moule gave Hardy a copy of Mantell's book The Wonders of Geology (1848) in 1858, and Adelene Buckland has suggested that there are "compelling similarities" between the "cliffhanger" section from A Pair of Blue Eyes and Mantell's geological descriptions. It has also been suggested that the character of Henry Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes was based on Horace Moule.

Throughout his life, Hardy sought a rationale for believing in an afterlife or a timeless existence, turning first to spiritualists, such as Henri Bergson, and then to Albert Einstein and J. M. E. McTaggart, considering their philosophy on time and space in relation to immortality.

Locations in novels
Sites associated with Hardy's own life and which inspired the settings of his novels continue to attract literary tourists and casual visitors. For locations in Hardy's novels see: Thomas Hardy's Wessex, and the Thomas Hardy's Wessex research site, which includes maps.

Influence
Hardy corresponded with and visited Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell at Wenlock Abbey and many of Lady Catherine's books are inspired by Hardy, who was very fond of her.

D. H. Lawrence's Study of Thomas Hardy (1914, first published 1936) indicates the importance of Hardy for him, even though this work is a platform for Lawrence's own developing philosophy rather than a more standard literary study. The influence of Hardy's treatment of character, and Lawrence's own response to the central metaphysic behind many of Hardy's novels, helped significantly in the development of The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920).

Wood and Stone (1915), the first novel by John Cowper Powys, who was a contemporary of Lawrence, was "Dedicated with devoted admiration to the greatest poet and novelist of our age Thomas Hardy". Powys's later novel Maiden Castle (1936) is set in Dorchester, which was Hardy's Casterbridge, and was intended by Powys to be a "rival" to Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. Maiden Castle is the last of Powys's so-called Wessex novels, Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932) and Weymouth Sands (1934), which are set in Somerset and Dorset.

Hardy was clearly the starting point for the character of the novelist Edward Driffield in W. Somerset Maugham's novel Cakes and Ale (1930). Thomas Hardy's works also feature prominently in the American playwright Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo (1985), in which a graduate thesis analysing Tess of the d'Urbervilles is interspersed with analysis of Matt's family's neuroses.

The symphonic poems Mai-Dun by John Ireland (1921) and Egdon Heath by Gustav Holst (1927) evoke the landscape of Hardy's novels.

Hardy has been a significant influence on Nigel Blackwell, frontman of the post-punk British rock band Half Man Half Biscuit, who has often incorporated phrases (some obscure) by or about Hardy into his song lyrics.

Prose
In 1912, Hardy divided his novels and collected short stories into three classes:

Novels of character and environment

 * The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, unpublished and lost)
 * Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872)
 * Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
 * The Return of the Native (1878)
 * The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (1886)
 * The Woodlanders (1887)
 * Wessex Tales (1888, a collection of short stories)
 * Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891)
 * Life's Little Ironies (1894, a collection of short stories)
 * Jude the Obscure (1895)

Romances and fantasies

 * A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (1873)
 * The Trumpet-Major (1880)
 * Two on a Tower: A Romance (1882)
 * A Group of Noble Dames (1891, a collection of short stories)
 * The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament (1897) (first published as a serial from 1892)

Novels of ingenuity

 * Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871)
 * The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876)
 * A Laodicean: A Story of To-day (1881)

Other
Hardy also produced minor tales; one story, The Spectre of the Real (1894) was written in collaboration with Florence Henniker. An additional short-story collection, beyond the ones mentioned above, is A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913). His works have been collected as the 24-volume Wessex Edition (1912–13) and the 37-volume Mellstock Edition (1919–20). His largely self-written biography appears under his second wife's name in two volumes from 1928 to 1930, as The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–91 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928, now published in a critical one-volume edition as The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, edited by Michael Millgate (1984).

Short stories
(with date of first publication)
 * "How I Built Myself a House" (1865)
 * "Destiny and a Blue Cloak" (1874)
 * "The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing" (1877)
 * "The Duchess of Hamptonshire" (1878) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "The Distracted Preacher" (1879) (collected in Wessex Tales)
 * "Fellow-Townsmen" (1880) (collected in Wessex Tales)
 * "The Honourable Laura" (1881) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "What the Shepherd Saw" (1881) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four" (1882) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The Three Strangers" (1883) (collected in Wessex Tales)
 * "The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid" (1883) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "Interlopers at the Knap" (1884) (collected in Wessex Tales)
 * "A Mere Interlude" (1885) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork" (1885) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "Alicia's Diary" (1887) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "The Waiting Supper" (1887–88) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "The Withered Arm" (1888) (collected in Wessex Tales)
 * "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" (1888) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The First Countess of Wessex" (1889) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "Anna, Lady Baxby" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "The Lady Icenway" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "Lady Mottisfont" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "The Lady Penelope" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "The Marchioness of Stonehenge" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "Squire Petrick's Lady" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890) (collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
 * "The Melancholy Hussar of The German Legion" (1890) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The Winters and the Palmleys" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "For Conscience' Sake" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "Incident in the Life of Mr. George Crookhill" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The Doctor's Legend" (1891)
 * "Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The History of the Hardcomes" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "Netty Sargent's Copyhold" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "On the Western Circuit" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "A Few Crusted Characters: Introduction" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The Superstitious Man's Story" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "To Please His Wife" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "The Son's Veto" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "Old Andrey's Experience as a Musician" (1891) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "Our Exploits At West Poley" (1892–93)
 * "Master John Horseleigh, Knight" (1893) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "The Fiddler of the Reels" (1893) (collected in Life's Little Ironies)
 * "An Imaginative Woman" (1894) (collected in Wessex Tales, 1896 edition)
 * "The Spectre of the Real" (1894)
 * "A Committee-Man of 'The Terror'" (1896) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "The Duke's Reappearance" (1896) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "The Grave by the Handpost" (1897) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "A Changed Man" (1900) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "Enter a Dragoon" (1900) (collected in A Changed Man and Other Stories)
 * "Blue Jimmy: The Horse Stealer" (1911)
 * "Old Mrs. Chundle" (1929)
 * "The Unconquerable"(1992)

Poetry collections
Online poems: Poems by Thomas Hardy at Poetry Foundation and Poems by Thomas Hardy at poemhunter.com
 * Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
 * Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
 * Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909)
 * Satires of Circumstance (1914)
 * Moments of Vision (1917)
 * Collected Poems (1919)
 * Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (1922)
 * Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)
 * Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928)
 * The Complete Poems (Macmillan, 1976)
 * Selected Poems (Edited by Harry Thomas, Penguin, 1993)
 * Hardy: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 1995)
 * Thomas Hardy: Selected Poetry and Nonfictional Prose (St. Martin's Press, 1996)
 * Selected Poems (Edited by Robert Mezey, Penguin, 1998)
 * Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (Edited by James Gibson, Palgrave, 2001)

Drama

 * The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon (verse drama)
 * The Dynasts, Part 1 (1904)
 * The Dynasts, Part 2 (1906)
 * The Dynasts, Part 3 (1908)
 * The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse (1923) (one-act play)

Biographies and criticism

 * Armstrong, Tim. "Player Piano: Poetry and Sonic Modernity" in Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (January 2007), 1–19.
 * Beatty, Claudius J.P. Thomas Hardy: Conservation Architect. His Work for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 1995. ISBN 0-900341-44-0
 * Blunden, Edmund. Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's, 1942.
 * Brady, Kristen. The Short Stories of Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan, 1982.
 * Boumelha, Penny. Thomas Hardy and Women. New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1982.
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 * Cecil, Lord David. Hardy the Novelist. London: Constable, 1943.
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 * D'Agnillo, Renzo, "Between Belief and Non-Belief: Thomas Hardy’s 'The Shadow on the Stone'”, in Thomas Hardy, Francesco Marroni and Norman Page (eds), Pescara, Edizioni Tracce, 1995, pp. 197–222.
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title: Thomas Hardy


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Boca Raton, Florida

Boca Raton ( Boca Ratón ) is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. The population was 97,422 in the 2020 census and it ranked as the 23rd-largest city in Florida in 2022. However, many people with a Boca Raton postal address live outside of municipal boundaries, such as in West Boca Raton. As a business center, the city also experiences significant daytime population increases. Boca Raton is 45 mi north of Miami and is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which had a population of 6,138,333 at the 2020 United States Census.

It was first incorporated on August 2, 1924 as "Bocaratone", and then incorporated as "Boca Raton" on May 26, 1925. While the area had been inhabited by the Glades culture, as well as Spanish and later British colonial empires prior to its annexation by the United States, the city's present form was developed predominantly by Addison Mizner starting in the 1920s. Mizner contributed to many buildings in the area having Mediterranean Revival or Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. Boca Raton also became a key city in the development of the early computer industry. The city is the birthplace of IBM's first personal computer and various other technologies created by the company.

Still centered around luxury beach culture, the city today is dotted by many malls and shopping centers, including the Town Center at Boca Raton. The ODP Corporation, which operates Office Depot and OfficeMax, is headquartered here. Boca Raton is also home to the main campus of Florida Atlantic University and the Evert Tennis Academy, owned by former professional tennis player Chris Evert. The city has a strict development code for the size and types of commercial buildings, building signs, and advertisements that may be erected within the city limit, which has led to major thoroughfares without billboards and large advertisements, as well as increased green spaces on roads.

Etymology
Boca Ratón translates to "Mouse Mouth" in English. Its name was originally labeled in the early European maps of the area as. Boca, meaning "mouth", was a common term to describe an inlet on maps by sailors. The meaning of the word ratones for the area is less certain. Some claim that the word ratones appears in old Spanish maritime dictionaries referring to "rugged rocks or stony ground on the bottom of some ports and coastal outlets, where the cables rub against". Thus, one possible translation of Boca Raton is "Rugged Inlet". Others claim that ratones referred to pirates who hid out in the area, and thus the name could translate to "Pirates' Inlet".

Pronunciation
City residents pronounce Raton as. People not from the region often mispronounce this as instead.

Timeline

 * 1890 – Bocaratone settled.
 * 1896 – Florida East Coast Railway begins operating.
 * 1909 – Bocaratone becomes part of newly created Palm Beach County.
 * 1912 – Intracoastal Waterway opens.
 * 1915
 * Telephone installed.
 * Board of Trade organized.
 * 1918 – Ebenezer Baptist Church founded in Pearl City neighborhood.
 * 1923 – Boca Raton Inlet bridge constructed.
 * 1924
 * Town of "Boca Ratone" incorporated.
 * Addison Mizner chosen as town planner.
 * George Long becomes mayor.
 * 1925
 * Town of "Boca Raton" incorporated.
 * Mizner Development Corporation in business.
 * 1926
 * Cloister resort built.
 * Chamber of Commerce founded.
 * 1927 – Town Hall built.
 * 1928 – Water plant built.
 * 1930
 * Railroad station built.
 * Population: 447.
 * 1936 – Airport established.
 * 1939 – Camino Real Bridge opens.
 * 1942 – U.S. military Boca Raton Army Air Field established.
 * 1947 – October: 1947 Cape Sable hurricane occurs.
 * 1950
 * Art Guild established.
 * Population: 992.
 * 1955 – Boca Raton News begins publication.
 * 1960 – Population: 6,961.
 * 1961
 * Florida Atlantic University founded.
 * Boca Raton Public Library building constructed.
 * 1962
 * Lynn University established.
 * Saint Andrew's School opens.
 * 1963 – Boca Inlet Bridge opens.
 * 1964 – Boca Raton Theatre in business.
 * 1970 – Population: 28,506.
 * 1972 – Boca Raton Historical Society founded.
 * 1979 – Jewish Floridian of South County newspaper begins publication.
 * 1980
 * Pope John Paul II High School established.
 * Town Center at Boca Raton opens.
 * 1981 – August: "IBM (International Business Machines) introduces the IBM PC from its Boca Raton factory."
 * 1986 – Boca Raton Museum of Art active.
 * 1989 – Boca Raton station opens.
 * 1990
 * Old Floresta designated a city historic district.
 * Population: 61,492.
 * 1991 – W.R. Grace & Co. headquarters relocated to Boca Raton from New York.
 * 1998 – City website online (approximate date).
 * 1999 – W.R. Grace & Co. headquarters moves away from Boca Raton.
 * 2000
 * Muvico cinema in business.
 * Population: 83,255
 * 2001 – Anthrax attack; Robert Stevens dies.
 * 2004 – September: Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Jeanne occur.
 * 2005 – October: Hurricane Wilma occurs.
 * 2009 – Boca Raton News ceases publication.
 * 2010 – Population: 84,392.
 * 2012
 * October 22: United States presidential debate held in Boca Raton.
 * 2014 – Susan Haynie elected mayor.
 * 2017
 * Ted Deutch becomes U.S. representative for Florida's 22nd congressional district.
 * September: Hurricane Irma occurs.

Early history
The area where Boca Raton is now located was originally occupied by the Glades culture, a Native American tribe of hunter-gatherers who relocated seasonally and between shellfish sources, distinct from the Tequesta to the south and the Jaega to the north.

What Spanish voyagers called "Boca de Ratones" was originally to the south, in present-day Biscayne Bay in Miami-Dade County. The area of Boca Raton was labeled "Rio Seco", meaning "Dry River", during this time. By mistake during the 19th century, mapmakers moved this location to the north and began referring to the city's lake, today known as Lake Boca Raton, as "Boca Ratone Lagoon" and later "Boca Ratone Sounde". An inland stream near the lake was later renamed Spanish River, and eventually became part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

When Spain surrendered Florida to Britain in 1763, the remaining Tequestas, along with other Indians who had taken refuge in the Florida Keys, were evacuated to Cuba. In the 1770s, Bernard Romans reported seeing abandoned villages in the area, but no inhabitants.

The area remained largely uninhabited for long afterwards, during the early years of Florida's incorporation in the United States. The first significant European settler to this area was Captain Thomas Moore Rickards in 1895, who resided in a house made of driftwood on the east side of the East Coast Canal, south of what is now the Palmetto Park Road bridge. He surveyed and sold land from the canal to beyond the railroad north of what is now Palmetto Park Road. Early settlement in the area increased shortly after Henry Flagler's expansion of the Florida East Coast Railway, connecting West Palm Beach to Miami.

Addison Mizner's resort town
Boca Raton as a city was the creation of architect Addison Mizner. Prior to him, Boca Raton was an unincorporated farming town with a population of 100 in 1920.

In 1925, Mizner announced his plan for "the foremost resort city on the North American continent," "a new exclusive social capital in America." After spending several years in Palm Beach, where, in his own words, he "did more than any one man to make the city beautiful," and designed the Everglades Club among many other buildings, in Boca Raton his plan was to create from scratch "a resort as splendid in its entirety as Palm Beach is in spots."

Activity in that area began at least a year, and probably more, before Mizner's announcement. Land acquisition, tens of thousands of acres, was the largest part. But it is hard not to see Mizner's hand in the incorporation of Boca Raton in 1924; the city immediately appointed him Town Planner. The Mizner Development Company was incorporated in 1925, and promptly issued $5 million of stock, which was fully subscribed in less than a week. $500,000 was reserved for the "average Floridian"; the remainder was purchased by, as Addison called them, "noted personages", all with a Palm Beach connection: Lytle Hall, Harold Vanderbilt, J. Leonard Repogle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Rodman Wanamaker, Paris Singer, Irving Berlin, Madame Frances Alda, W. C. Robinson, H. H. Rodgers, D. H. Conkling, A. T. Herd, Porte, William Kissam Vanderbilt II, Elizabeth Arden, Jesse Livermore, Clarence H. Geist, and T. Coleman du Pont as chairman. Addison's brother Wilson also appears on the list of investors, but he had little to invest.

Instead of the existing Palmetto Park Road, the main street in Mizner's Boca was to be El Camino Real, 20 lanes wide, which Mizner fancifully translated as "The Royal Highway", referring to Spain's road network and to the road to Santa Fe and to the Spanish missions in California. (Spanish kings rarely or never travelled on these roads; "The Government Road" would be just as accurate.) It was originally to be circular, with a lagoon in the middle. Soon it became, in the plans, Boca Raton's main east-west street, to be 220 ft wide and with a canal for pleasure boats in the center. (In the drawing of it on the cover of Mizner Development's first brochure is a Venetian gondola. ) His statement that it was inspired by Botafogo, a neighborhood and beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is another of his many inventions of foreign "facts". Mizner, who never went to Brazil nor knew Brazilians, simply made it up because the name "Botafogo" ("fire thrower") sounded impressive, as was the concept of imitating Rio de Janeiro. (The only street in Rio de Janeiro anything like the supposed picture, actually an artist's conception, of "Botafogo" that Mizner included in his first catalogue, is the pt:Canal do Mangue, which runs down the middle of two streets, but is nowhere near Botafogo, a more elegant name than Mangue "mangrove". )

Only 0.5 miles of the road was built (although the street has subsequently been extended to the west at normal scale). According to drawings, the centerpiece of the street was to be a canal for pleasure boats; it was never built. All streets were to be at least 60 feet wide.

His first buildings in Boca Raton were his Administrative Buildings, on El Camino Real (in 2018 the Addison Restaurant), and a small hotel to house interested investors. Mizner designed Boca's first town hall/police station/fire station/library, although the design actually built is much smaller and less expensive than what Mizner planned. Today (2018) it is the Boca Raton History Museum, which houses Boca's Welcome Center and the Boca Raton Historical Society.

The hotel was his Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn, built in 1926, later renamed the Boca Raton Resort & Club, and is one of the only "5 star" hotels in Florida. The 1969 addition of its "pink tower" hotel building is visible from miles away as a towering monument on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Because of the end of the Florida land boom of the 1920s and the 1926 Miami hurricane, the Mizner Development Corporation went into bankruptcy in 1927. Little of Mizner's Boca Raton was ever built: his Administration Buildings, the Cloister Inn, 1/2 mile of El Camino Real, the small Dunagan Apartments (demolished), a few houses near the Cloister Inn (demolished), the Spanish Village neighborhood, and a few small houses in what is now the Old Floresta Historic District neighborhood.

World War II Army Air Force Base
During World War II, some of the land used by the Japanese farmers of the Yamato Colony was confiscated and used as the site of the Boca Raton Army Air Force Base, a major training facility for B-29 bomber crews and the only facility in the U.S. training radar operators. Much of the Boca Raton Army Airfield was later donated to Palm Beach County and became the grounds of Florida Atlantic University. Many of FAU's parking lots are former runways of the airbase. When viewed from above, the site's layout for its previous use as an airfield is plainly evident. Boca Raton Airport's runway was once part of the original airbase, and is still active to this day, although the runway has been rebuilt. Army School Building #3 (T-604) of the Army Air Forces Base has survived as the office building for the Cynthia Gardens apartment complex on Northwest 4th Avenue.

Post-World War II history
Boca Raton was the site of two now vanished amusement parks, Africa U.S.A. (1953–1961) and Ancient America (1953–1959). Africa U.S.A. was a wild animal park in which tourists rode a "Jeep Safari Train" through the park. There were no fences separating the animals from the tourists. It is now the Camino Gardens subdivision one mile west of the Boca Raton Hotel. A red wooden bridge and remnants from the Watusi Geyser and Zambezi Falls, a 30-foot waterfall, from Africa USA can still be seen at the entrance to Camino Gardens. Ancient America was built surrounding a real Native American burial mound. Today, the mound is still visible within the Boca Marina & Yacht Club neighborhood on U.S. 1 near Yamato Road.

IBM
In the late 1960s, IBM announced their intentions to open a manufacturing plant in the area. In 1965, well before the extension of I-95 into Southern Florida, IBM, working in secret with the Arvida corporation, quietly purchased several hundred acres of real estate west of the CSX rail line and northwest of Florida Atlantic University. Originally situated in unincorporated Palm Beach County, the site was annexed into Boca Raton almost a year following its dedication in 1970.

Construction of IBM's main complex began in 1967, designed by Marcel Breuer, and the manufacturing and office complex was dedicated in March 1970. The campus was designed with self-sufficiency in mind and sported its own electrical substation, water pumping station, and rail spur.

By 1984 IBM was Palm Beach County's largest corporate employer, with 8,500 Boca Raton employees. Among other noteworthy IT accomplishments, such as the mass production of the System/360 and development of the Series/1 mainframe computers, IBM's main complex was the birthplace of the IBM PC, which later evolved into the IBM Personal System/2, developed in nearby Delray Beach. Starting in 1987, IBM relocated its manufacturing for what became the IBM PC division to Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, and converted the manufacturing facilities into offices and laboratories, later producing products such as the OS/2 operating system and VoiceType Dictation, later known as ViaVoice voice-recognition software.

IBM maintained its facilities in the South Florida area until 1996, when the facility was closed and sold to Blue Lake Real Estate. The site was sold to T-REX Management Consortium, then to the Blackstone Group in 2005, who renamed it the Boca Corporate Center and Campus. The site was later renamed the Boca Raton Innovation Campus (BRiC). Crocker Partners, noted for its development of Mizner Park and Office Depot headquarters, purchased BRiC in April 2018.

What used to be IBM's Building 051, an annex separated from the former main IBM campus by Spanish River Boulevard, was donated to the Palm Beach County School District and converted into Don Estridge High Tech Middle School. It is named after Don Estridge, whose team was responsible for developing the IBM PC. IBM returned in July 2001, opening the software development laboratory at Beacon Square off Congress Avenue.

It is noteworthy that still left standing inside the old IBM complex is the office and conference table where Bill Gates signed his historic deal to supply IBM with the Microsoft MS-DOS operating system for its personal computer line.

Suburban expansion

In 1991, the new downtown outdoor shopping and dining center, Mizner Park, was completed over the site of the old Boca Raton Mall. It has since become a cultural center for southern Palm Beach County. Featuring a landscaped central park between the two main roads (collectively called Plaza Real) with stores only on the outside of the roads, Mizner Park resembles a Mediterranean suburban "town center" with a more contemporary look. It features many restaurants and is home to the Boca Raton Museum of Art, which moved to the new facility in 2001. In 2002, a new amphitheater was built, replacing a smaller one and providing a large-capacity outdoor venue where concerts and other performances are held. The Mizner Park Cultural Center, an indoor performing arts/comedy show theater is located to the southwest of the amphitheater within the Mizner Park property.

The National Cartoon Museum was built on the southwest edge of Mizner Park in 1996. Open for six years, the museum relocated to its original home in New York City in 2002.

As development continued to focus to the west of the city in the 1980s and 1990s, the mall area known as Town Center at Boca Raton became the geographic center of what is referred to as West Boca Raton, though this mall was not annexed into the city until 2004.

Forbes ranked Boca's Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club the third most exclusive gated community in the US in 2017. Many mansions and estates have been built and reflect the high real estate values. 18.1% of homes for sale are within the $655,000–$966,000 range, 8.5% in the $966,000–$1.288 million range, and 11.9% in the $1.288 million plus range. Since the mid-2010s, there has been a developing boom such as the building of the Mandarin Oriental's Residences, remodeling of Downtown Boca Raton's Mizner Park, and development around Florida Atlantic University and Lynn University.

On November 2, 2004, the voters of the Via Verde Association, Waterside, Deerhurst Association (Boca South), Marina Del Mar Association, Rio Del Mar Association (both originally Boca Del Mar communities), and Heatherwood of Boca Raton Condominium Association approved annexation into the Boca Raton city limits, increasing the city land area to 29.6 sqmi. A new gated community called Royal Palm Polo was annexed to the City of Boca Raton, which is the only jurisdiction north of Clint Moore Road.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 75.4 km2, of which 70.4 km2 of this is land and 5.0 km2 of it (6.63%) is water. Boca Raton is a "principal city" (as defined by the Census Bureau) of the Miami metropolitan area. Approximately 1 square mile is on the barrier island Deerfield Beach Island (DBI), also colloquially known as Deerfield Cay. Like other South Florida cities, Boca Raton has a water table that does not permit building basements, however plumbing and sewage is constructed underneath the homes and streets, in addition to electrical systems in some areas. There are several high points in the city, such as 4th Avenue which is aptly named "High Street". The highest point in this area is the guard shack at Camino Gardens, which is 24 ft above sea level. The Boca Raton Hotel's Beach Club rests at 23 ft above sea level.

Several small tunnels run under roads in Boca, but the roads are built up several feet at these locations, or are on dunes. Several of these tunnels are under State Road A1A at Spanish River Park, from the west side of the road where parking is available to beachgoers, to the east side of the road, which is where the beach is located. A1A is already higher than the surrounding land here due to sand dunes formed by erosion and other natural features.

Neighborhoods
Pearl City is a neighborhood in Boca Raton, immediately north of downtown and within city limits. The neighborhood was originally platted on May 30, 1915 for the blue-collar African Americans employed at the Boca Raton Resort and similar establishments, on area farms, in construction, and various other jobs.

Climate
Boca Raton has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen climate classification Af), as its driest month (December) averages 62.5mm of precipitation, narrowly meeting the minimum standard of 60mm in the driest month to qualify for that designation. In general the climate is warm and sunny much of the year, although daily thundershowers occur in the hot season from June through September. Boca Raton is frost free. The warm tropical climate in South Florida supports the growth of tropical trees and plants such as the coconut palm that was introduced hundreds of years ago to Florida in nearby West Palm Beach.

Winter high temperatures are typically in the 75–83 degrees range, while summer high temperatures are about 87–92 degrees.

Demographics
Boca Raton and other parts of Palm Beach County have a significant Jewish population. Certain areas of outside of Boca Raton city limits, such as the Sandalfoot Cove community, have significant populations of Brazilian and other Latino immigrants.

Boca Raton is known for its affluent and educated social community. According to Forbes, Boca Raton has three of the ten most expensive gated communities in the U.S. The Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club holds the #1 spot, The Sanctuary takes #6, and Le Lac takes the #8 spot.

Festivals and events
The Boca Raton Bowl is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sanctioned Division I college football bowl game that features the Mid-American Conference (MAC) facing off against an opponent from the American Athletic Conference (AAC) or Conference USA (C-USA) in alternating years. Each conference participates four times during the six-year agreement, which began with the 2014 season. The Bowl is held at FAU Stadium.

St. Mark Greek Orthodox Church in Boca Raton hosts a popular Greek festival during the last weekend of January. An estimated 15,000 people attended the festival in 2018.

Additionally, the city hosts the "Festival of the Arts BOCA" annually during the spring, and the Brazilian Beat Festival in the fall.

Mizner Park
Mizner Park is a lifestyle center in downtown Boca Raton. The area contains several stores and fashion boutiques, restaurants, an iPic movie theater, and housing. The Center for the Arts at Mizner Park is on the development's north end, which includes the Boca Raton Museum of Art and the Count de Hoernele Amphitheater. Royal Palm Place is adjacent to Mizner Park, and it contains upscale shopping, restaurants, and apartments.

Town Center Mall
Town Center at Boca Raton is an upscale super-regional shopping center in Boca Raton that is the largest enclosed and conventional shopping mall within Palm Beach County, and the third largest by square feet in South Florida, behind Sawgrass Mills and Aventura Mall.

In 1999, the Simon Property Group bought Town Center at Boca Raton and began building a new wing on its southeastern side, and completed renovations in 2018.

Seritage Growth Properties plans to build a lifestyle center called The Collection at Boca Town Center which will provide shopping, dining, and entertainment.

Crocker Partners will build a Restaurant Row near the mall.

Beaches and parks
Boca Raton's eastern coast has two miles of beaches, notably Red Reef Park and South Inlet Park.

Red Reef Park has the Gumbo Limbo Environmental Complex, an environmental education center. Founded in 1984, Gumbo Limbo is a cooperative project of the City of Boca Raton, Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District, Florida Atlantic University, and Friends of Gumbo Limbo. In addition to the sea tanks, butterfly garden and boardwalk trail through the hammocks complete with an observation tower, Gumbo Limbo also houses a research facility run by FAU where students study coral reefs, sea turtles, sharks, sea grass and other marine-related subjects.

Sugar Sand Park is a municipal park in Boca Raton. It contains the Children's Science Explorium. Another park is the Burt Aaronson South County Regional Park in West Boca Raton. The park contains several amenities, including the Osprey Point Golf Course, a dog park, the Sunset Cove Amphitheater, the Coconut Cove Waterpark, and the Daggerwing Nature Center. Spanish River Park is a family-friendly city park along the Intracoastal Waterway for picnicking, swimming & bird-watching.

Other
Old Floresta Historic District has several historic houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Boca Raton is home to the Wick Theatre & Costume Museum.

Economy
Office Depot, a supplier of office products and services, has its global headquarters on a 28-acre campus in the city. The GEO Group, also has its headquarters in Boca Raton based out of One Park Place. Media company Friend Finder Networks, consumer products company Jarden and e-retailer Vitacost, YACHTICO and BMI Gaming are also based in Boca Raton.

Top employers
According to the City's 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:

Public schools
Public education is provided and managed by The School District of Palm Beach County, the thirteenth-largest public school district in the United States. Boca Raton is also home to several notable private and religious schools.

As of 2007, Boca Raton was served by four public high schools. Within the city's limits, Boca Raton Community High School serves the eastern part of the city. Spanish River Community High School serves the west-central part of the city limits and parts of unincorporated Boca Raton. Olympic Heights Community High School and West Boca Raton Community High School serve the western unincorporated areas. Spanish River, Olympic Heights, and West Boca Raton also serve students from Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.

The area is served by five public middle schools. Don Estridge High Tech Middle School is a technology magnet school named for Don Estridge, the leader of a small group of engineers who developed the IBM Personal Computer in Boca Raton. The other four public middle schools are Boca Raton Community Middle School, Eagles Landing Middle School, Loggers' Run Community Middle School, and Omni Middle School.

The area is served by thirteen public elementary schools: • Addison Mizner Elementary

• Blue Lake Elementary

• Boca Raton Elementary

• Calusa Elementary

• Coral Sunset Elementary

• Del Prado Elementary

• Hammock Pointe Elementary

• J.C. Mitchell Elementary

• Sandpiper Shores Elementary

• Sunrise Park Elementary

• Verde K-8

• Waters Edge Elementary

• Whispering Pines Elementary

Alternative schooling
Two alternatives to the Palm Beach County Public Schools in Boca Raton are the K–8 Alexander D. Henderson University School (ADHUS) and FAU High School (FAUHS). Both are on the Florida Atlantic University campus and are organized as a unique and separate school district; they are not part of the Palm Beach County School System. Henderson School is recognized as Florida Atlantic University School District #72, under the College of Education's administrative oversight.

University schools in Florida are authorized to provide instruction for grades K–12 and university students, support university research efforts, and test educational reforms for Florida schools. Both ADHUS and FAUHS are public schools and thus do not charge tuition. And they are open to children who reside in Palm Beach County or Broward County. ADHUS admission is by lottery, while FAUHS admission is determined by academic ability. Student characteristics of gender, race, family income and student ability are used to match the student population profile to that of the state.

FAU High School is a dual-enrollment program that involves itself primarily in collegiate classes. Students in ninth grade take advanced classes at the ADHUS sister campus, while students in higher grades attend only collegiate classes on Florida Atlantic University's campus, earning dual credit for both high school and college. A student who has successfully completed all four years at FAU High School will graduate having completed three years of university study on a college campus.

Private schools
Private schools in Boca Raton accelerated in demand in the early 2020s as Wall Street moved many employees and offices to the South Florida area. • Boca Raton Christian School

• Harid Conservatory

• Katz Hillel Day School

• Pine Crest School

• Saint Jude Catholic School and Parish

• Saint Andrew's School

• Saint John Paul II Academy

• Grandview Preparatory School

• Donna Klein Jewish Academy

• Boca Prep International School

• Saint Joan of Arc Catholic School and Church

• Katz Yeshiva High School of Boca Raton

• Spanish River Christian

• Saint Paul Lutheran School

• Advent Lutheran School

• Torah Academy of Boca Raton

• American Heritage School

Higher education
Florida Atlantic University (FAU), founded in 1961, held its first classes in Boca Raton in 1964. FAU is a member of the State University System of Florida and is the largest university in Boca Raton. It has over 29,000 students, 3,555 of which are residential students, and a Division I athletics program. In recognition of the rapid growth of Boca Raton's universities, in particular FAU, the city of Boca Raton has recently been referred to as a "burgeoning college town".

Lynn University is a four-year co-educational institution renamed to honor the Lynn (Eugene & Christine) family who continue to be benefactors of the university; its Digital Media Arts College, founded in 2001, offers bachelor's and master's degrees in computer animation and graphic design.

Palm Beach State College has its Boca Raton campus adjacent to Florida Atlantic University since 1983. When it was opened, it was named Palm Beach Junior College. In 1988 it changed its name to Palm Beach Community College, and in 2009, to Palm Beach State College.

Everglades University has its main campus in Boca Raton.

Libraries and newspaper
The Boca Raton Public Library serves city of Boca Raton residents. The Glades Road Branch Library and the West Boca Branch Library of the Palm Beach County Library System additionally serve Boca Raton residents who live outside the city limits in West Boca Raton. County library card holders may use any of the sixteen branches in the Palm Beach County Library System and have access to many databases and downloadable e-books and audio books.

The Sun-Sentinel newspaper delivers local news to the area. Previously, the Boca Raton News was a local newspaper for the town.

Politics

 * George Long, 1924–1925
 * John Brown, 1925–1929
 * Fred Aiken, 1929–1938
 * Joe Mitchell, 1938–1950
 * Bill O'Donnell, 1950–1951
 * Louie Zimmerman, 1951–1952
 * Bill Day, 1952–1953, 1954–1954
 * Harold Turner, 1953–1954, 1954–1955
 * Bill Herbold, 1955–1956
 * Roy Shores, 1956–1958
 * Hal Dane, 1958–1959
 * Joe Delong, 1959–1960, 1963–1964
 * Courtney Boone, 1960–1961
 * Leo Fox, 1961–1962
 * John Brandt, 1962–1963
 * Harold Maull, 1964–1965, 1968–1969
 * Pat Honchell, 1966–1967
 * Nardy Turner, 1967–1968
 * Emil Danciu, 1969–1970, 1987–1993
 * Tore Wallin, 1970–1971
 * Norm Wymbs, 1971
 * Bill Miller, 1971–1972
 * Byrd Marshall, 1972–1973, 1975–1976, 1978
 * Al Alford, 1973–1974
 * Dick Houpana, 1974–1975, 1977
 * Byrd Marshall, 1972–1973, 1975–1976, 1978
 * Dorothy Wilken, 1976–1977
 * Jeff Milner, 1977–1981
 * Bill Konrad, 1981–1987
 * Bill Smith, 1993–1995
 * Carol Hanson, 1995–2001
 * Steven L. Abrams, 2001–2008
 * Susan Whelchel, 2008–2014
 * Susan Haynie, 2014–2018
 * Scott Singer, 2018–present

The City of Boca Raton has a Council-Manager form of government. The Mayor has been chosen through a direct election since 1978. The offices of the city council and the mayor are nonpartisan. The previous mayor was Susan Haynie. On April 27, 2018, Governor Rick Scott suspended Susan Haynie due to felony and misdemeanor charges brought against her for corruption and bribery. (She would later plead guilty to two of the counts, avoiding jail time.) Scott Singer was appointed mayor and held that position on that basis until the August 28th special election; Singer was elected outright as mayor in that election.

As of January 2021, Democrat Ted Deutch represents Florida's 22nd congressional district, which includes the most northern point of Boca Raton and extends south through Palm Beach County. The district then continues into Broward County communities like Coral Springs, Parkland, and Margate, down to Fort Lauderdale.

In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Republican Donald Trump won in Boca Raton by a plurality.

Crime
The City of Boca Raton is one of the safest cities in Palm Beach County, with a crime rate 38% lower than the entire state of Florida.

Boca Raton has had connections to the Mafia. According to a number of US Federal indictments, as of June 2004, the Gambino family continues to operate in Boca Raton. The television show The Sopranos featured the city in its plot ("Boca" and "...To Save Us All From Satan's Power"), and Mafia Wife author Lynda Milito resides in Boca Raton. Joey Merlino, the reputed head of the Philadelphia crime family, also resides in northern Boca Raton.

In 2007, several murders at the Town Center Mall gained national attention. In March, a 52-year-old woman was kidnapped and murdered. In December of the same year, a 47-year-old woman and her 7-year-old daughter were also kidnapped, and later found bound and shot in the head in the woman's SUV in the mall parking lot. This case was featured on America's Most Wanted. Though there is no forensic evidence to suggest the murders were committed by the same person, the similarities in the cases led police to believe they were related. To this day, the murders all remain unsolved.

The Pearl City neighborhood has been known as a drug trafficking hub in the past. In recent years, the city, like most of the county (especially neighboring Delray Beach) has experienced a steady rise in heroin and opioid overdoses.

As of the end of 2019, the crime rate in Boca Raton was down 26% over the preceding 13 years.

Air
The Boca Raton Airport (BCT) is a general aviation airport immediately adjacent to Florida Atlantic University and Interstate 95. It has a control tower which is staffed from 0700 to 2300. The Boca Raton Airport is publicly owned and governed by a seven-member Authority appointed by the City of Boca Raton and the Palm Beach County Commission. The airport is noted for a very high concentration of private jets and charter aviation, and the airspace surrounding the airport is in Class D airspace.

All three of the Miami area's major commercial airports serve Boca Raton, though the city is located about equidistantly between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Palm Beach International Airport. Most commercial international flights to the region will pass through Miami International Airport, which can be accessed via I-95 and Florida State Route 112 by road or by using Tri-Rail.

Highways

 * State Road A1A is a north-south road lying between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean.
 * U.S. Highway 1, locally known as "Federal Highway", is a north-south highway passing through the city's downtown, commercial, and industrial districts in the eastern part of the city.
 * U.S. Highway 441 (also known as State Road 7) is a north-south highway passing through commercial and residential districts west of the city limits.
 * Interstate 95 bisects the city from north to south with four interchanges serving Boca Raton.
 * Florida's Turnpike is a north-south highway passing through unincorporated Boca Raton, forming part of the city limits in the north, with one interchange at Glades Road.
 * Glades Road is an east-west road between US 441 and US 1.
 * Other major east-west roads include Palmetto Park Road and Yamato Road.
 * Other major north-south roads include Military Trail and Jog Road / Powerline Road (Changes name on Glades Road).

Rail

 * The Tri-Rail commuter rail system serves the city with its Boca Raton station on the south side of Yamato Road just west of I-95.
 * Freight service operated by CSX Transportation and Florida East Coast Railway also serve the city.
 * Brightline has a station adjacent to the Boca Raton Public Library. It provides service to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Aventura, as well as Orlando.

Bus

 * PalmTran provides local bus service in the area.

Water
Long before any settlers arrived, the original 1870 government survey of the area showed that just west of and parallel to the Atlantic Ocean's coastal dune was the "Boca Ratones Lagoon", which extended south for 9 mi measured from just north of the present location of Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach. Along the southern half of the lagoon were three wide areas each called a "Lake", which are now named (north to south) Lake Rogers, Lake Wyman, and Lake Boca Raton. At the southeast end of the lagoon was a short protrusion toward the south which would become the Boca Raton Inlet after a sandbar at its mouth was removed.

The lagoon and lakes were part of a half-mile (0.8 km) wide swamp, west of which was scrub land a mile (1.6 km) wide (part of the Atlantic Coastal Ridge) where the Florida East Coast Railway (1896) and Dixie Highway (1923) were built. To the west of the scrub was a half mile or wider swamp within which flowed north to south the "Prong of Hillsborough River", which is now the El Rio Canal. It now forms the eastern border of Florida Atlantic University and the Old Floresta neighborhood. The prong entered the "Hillsborough River" at the present eastern end of the straight portion of the Hillsboro Canal (dredged 1911–1914), which is the southern city limits. The river flowed southeast in several channels along the western edge of the present Deerfield Island County Park, formerly called Capone Island (named for Al Capone who owned it during the 1930s), which did not become an island until the Royal Palm Canal was dredged along its northern edge in 1961. Flowing south from the lagoon to the river along the eastern edge of the 'island' was a "Small boat Pass into Hillsboro' River", also called the Little Hillsboro. The river continued due south about 4+1/2 mi just inland of the coastal dune until it emptied into the Atlantic Ocean at the "Hillsborough Bar", now the Hillsboro Inlet.

The lagoon was dredged in 1894–1895 to form part of the Florida East Coast Canal with a minimum depth of 5 ft and a minimum width of 50 ft. After 1895, the lagoon and canal were sometimes called the Spanish River. Between 1930 and 1935 the canal was improved to 8 x by the federal government and renamed the Intracoastal Waterway. It was improved again between 1960 and 1965 to 10 x. All three versions were subject to shoaling which reduced their depths below the specified minimum. Forming part of the northern city limits is the C-15 canal, connecting the El Rio Canal to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Boca Raton pioneered an innovative means to recycle wastewater that involves selling the recycled water to golf courses, to use for irrigation. This system is called the IRIS system. Instead of pumping the nutrient laden wastewater out to sea, or under the ground into an aquifer, the IRIS system prevents nutrients from ending up in the ocean, reducing Boca Raton's impact on the problem of toxic algae blooms.

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title: Boca Raton, Florida


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