"He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm": Thomas Hardy and the RSPCA

abstract: The year 2024 marks the bicentenary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the world's first registered animal welfare organization, established in 1824. This analysis explores Thomas Hardy's response to animal rights discourses during his life, with special emphasis on the common pursuits of the RSPCA as a champion of animal rights and of Hardy as an evolutionary meliorist who cared about animals. As evidenced by Hardy's literary and non-literary, public and personal writings, his vision of a humanitarian future was inseparable from the question of animal rights, including the plights of working / performing animals, and cruelty to animals in slaughterhouses, battlefields, laboratories and animal sports. Although Hardy was disappointed in his aims to save animals and to alter people's consciousness on the issue, animal rights movements have come a long way through decades of struggle, as reflected in the achievements of the RSPCA and other animal welfare movements. Hardy's attitude toward animals also anticipates subsequent developments in animal studies, including post-humanist approaches.