Final answer:
At the age of 16, Thomas Hardy was apprenticed to a Dorchester architect, which influenced his later literary works.
Step-by-step explanation:
At age 16, Thomas Hardy was apprenticed to a Dorchester architect. The correct answer to the question is c) Architect. Hardy's time as an apprentice under John Hicks, a local Dorchester architect, was a formative period in his life. During his apprenticeship, he was exposed to the restoration of old churches, which may have contributed to his later descriptions of rural life and settings in his novels. Hardy, who is more famously known as a novelist and poet, applied the meticulousness and precision he learned in architecture to his writing.