Hardy the Obscure: Why nobody reads him anymore

Does anyone read Thomas Hardy anymore (other than my sister)? He used to be on a lot of reading lists for AP English and the like, less so on college reading lists (none at my college, back in the day) - he was (and is) considered old-fashioned and kind of fussy, even for his time. He never really had a distinct breakthrough in style, or not enough of one, so he does stand out from the pack of his contemporaries and near contemporaries the way Dickens, Conrad, Lawrence (himself in disfavor, for different reasons) did and still do. In fact, he's fallen back deeper into the genteel, PBS obscurity of Thackeray, Trollope, et al. And yet - I've started rereading him, first time in more than 30 years, picking up "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" based on some reference to it that I came across and realizing I remember nothing at all about it. And I see immediately there are obvious stengths and beauties: he did create an entire world of "Dorset" over the span of many novels, so each work is part of overall design greater than the sum of its parts. That's always true when we consider a writer's "corpus," but more so for the very few who have a unified vision of their own works - Balzac, Faulkner. Tess immediately sets up a premise of a rather foolish peddler (Darbury?) who comes to believe he's the last surviving member of the great D'Urberville family - and we'll see how this changes his behavior and most important how it affects lovely daughter Tess. So it's a book about class, character, and setting - and with the unique Hardy strain of darkness, the element of his style, as best I can remember, that does set him apart, particularly in Jude the Obscure. He also had a way with titles!