At age eighteen, he was sent to London for more training for the printing business, but, after a failed attempt at romance, he instead enlisted with the army.

Initially he wrote leaders for the Wednesbury Advertiser, then worked for the newspaper Birmingham Morning News reporting on police cases.

[1] That year, Murray's story A Life's Atonement appeared in Chamber's Journal, followed by Joseph's Coat in 1880.

The late 19th-century author George Gissing wrote in his diary that he had "heard of the book as good; of course find it very poor.

In that essay he challenged some of the features of Hardy's later novels, in particular Jude the Obscure, the characterization in it of Sue Bridehead, and its effect on impressionable readers: "one of the gravest dangers which beset women is that of hysterical self-deception ... to make them believe that their emotions are worthy of the great human heart is to increase their morbid temptations.