“The appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a partly real, partly dream-country, has become more and more popular as a practical provincial definition; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from. But I ask all good and idealistic readers to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside these volumes in which their lives and conversations are detailed.” Hardy in his 1912 preface to Far from the Madding Crowd

Over 175 years ago, author Thomas Hardy was born in a cob and thatch cottage on the edge of woods and heathland in Dorset. In it, he imagined the plots and characters that would drive some of his greatest novels – and began to create a landscape both real and imagined that literary travelers still seek out today.

Hardy fans keep flocking to Dorset, a county in South West England, in search of the place the English novelist and poet crafted through his literary works. Spend a few nights in what he called Casterbridge (Dorchester, on the map)  or go for a long walk along a coastal path to swing by the place he referred to as Lulwind (that would actually be Lulworth) Cove, and you’ll find yourself in the heart of Hardy country.

You can ramble from Dorchester to the small, rural cottage in Higher Bockhampton where Hardy grew up and wrote several of his early works, including Far from the Madding Crowd. Passing through fields with only cows under the greenwood trees for walking companions there’s an inescapable sense, despite his warning to readers, that you may somehow have wandered right into what Hardy called his “partly real, partly dream-country.”

That’s what Wessex was, after all – an artistic conceit invented by Hardy but inspired by the real landscape he knew so well in Dorset. And it continues to hold sway over readers and tourists alike who venture to this piece of the English countryside to tap into the world he vividly detailed.

On a walk to the outskirts of Dorchester to visit the Victorian town house Hardy designed, sightseers can pass the hotel he immortalized in The Mayor of Casterbridge – now, naturally, the Best Western Kings Arms Hotel. But it still looks the part, if you ignore the sign. Strolling down the high street, spot the Barclays Bank with a blue plaque commemorating where said mayor might have lived had he… well… lived at all.

Take a short jaunt out to Wool to see the picturesque Woolbridge Manor, which Hardy dubbed Wellbridge House in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, where the tragic heroine spent her ill-fated honeymoon with the terrible Angel Clare. Round out the evening by catching the light fading away at Lulworth Cove, imagining Far from the Madding Crowd’s Sergeant Troy taking his infamous swim “between the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean.” Then it’s time for a walk over the hills to the nearby beach at Durdle Door with its immense limestone arch jutting out of the sea. It’s a heady mix of naturalism and fiction.

For a little more of the “partly real” tourist experience, visitors can step inside Max Gate, the Victorian town house Hardy designed that sits on the outskirts of Dorchester. In this home, Hardy set down onto paper his great novels Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, as well as the poetry that consumed his time after he abandoned writing fiction. His study is across town, however, reconstructed in the Dorset County Museum, nestled in between exhibits detailing the town’s Roman history and Jurassic past. It seems apt that the past and present, the real and the constructed, intersect in so many ways in this town.

As Hardy wrote, “Casterbridge announced Rome in every street, alley and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed the dead men of Rome,” while still presenting itself as the quintessential modern English market town. It was, and is, a town surrounded by the remains of a first century AD Roman amphitheater, the Maumbury Rings: “Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind.”

Indeed, for the literary traveler who must go full circle, the trip to Wessex can end in a graveyard in the heart of the Dorset countryside. There in Stinsford, visitors can sit beside the plot containing Hardy’s heart.

Two days after the author died, doctors cut the heart from his body. They wrapped it in a towel and placed it in a biscuit tin. Hardy’s ashes went to Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, but his heart stayed in Dorset, the place that was his home and inspiration.

Or you could believe the rumors that a cat ate it before it made its way into the ground. It would be one of those Hardy-esque twists of fate, after all. But, either way, there’s a grave near Dorchester etched in stone with the words, “Here lies the heart of Thomas Hardy.”

Hardy was “ahead of his time” as a writer and thinker, Mike Nixon, the secretary of the Thomas Hardy Society, said over coffee at the county museum, and that creative approach to the concept of place means the author’s Dorset (his Wessex) can still be found in many ways today. “These are real places, real towns, and they’re still identifiable today,” he said.

“We’ve got the greatest collection of Hardy memorabilia in the world,” he added. “People come to see what they’ve read in the novels – Dorchester, Weymouth, it’s all just down the road.”

Stepping out into the countryside surrounding Dorchester, following the trail from the town he made his home to the picturesque cottage of his birth, it seems Mike is right. It might be a “partly real, partly dream-country,” but perhaps a glimpse of Hardy’s Wessex can be found just a walk away, far from the madding crowd.

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Mackenzie Weinger is a journalist and editor currently based in Washington, D.C. She’s written on foreign affairs, politics and art for publications such as the Financial Times, World Politics Review, and The Washington Diplomat, among others. Mackenzie, a Los Angeles native, has a master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College London and a BA in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara.