Many of Thomas Hardy's works were considered iconoclastic in his day.

She wished she had some fuck-me stiletto thigh-high boots on to give her more of a Domme appearance, but she had seen plenty of femdoms at the club wearing comfortable walking shoes.

Diva fell quietly asleep, and presently there were indications that she would soon be noisily asleep. Miss Mapp hoped that she would begin to snore properly, for that would be a good set-down for Lucia […]

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps no longer exists...

• Sir William Jones, 2 February, 1786, at the Asiatick Society.