Probably more famous as a novelist, who wrote the poem "The Ruined Maid"?

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is probably best known nowadays as a novelist, the creator of such canonical works as "Tess of the d'Urbevilles", "Far from the Madding Crowd" and "Return of the Native". However, in his latter years, especially, he concentrated mainly on poetry. It was not necessarily received with great acclaim at the time, but later poets, including Philip Larkin and Dylan Thomas, acknowledged his influence on their own works.

One of his better known poems is "The Ruined Maid". It was initially written, exceptionally, relatively early in his career, but not published (and then somewhat censored!) until 1901, in the volume entitled "Poems of the Past and Present".

Written in the form of a dialogue, it concerns, as the title says, a ruined maid, or as we might more likely say nowadays, a fallen woman. The first voice, in a rustic dialogue that will be familiar from the novels, expresses surprise and disdain at how the maid is apparently dressed in such finery and enjoying such a luxurious life, whilst she, in standard English, makes no bones about it all being thanks to her immoral lifestyle. The tone is ironic, and the poem was meant to be humorous, but there is a serious point behind it, too, and although the situations described are different in many ways, we know from "Tess" that Hardy was no Victorian moralist who automatically condemned "ruined maids".