Under Storm's Wing

Thomas Helen, Thomas Myfanwy

"Here is a portrait of the poet by his wife which has no equal, not even in Mary Shelley's sketches of her husband" – New Statesman

Under Storm's Wing collects all that Helen Thomas (1877-1967) wrote about the poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917): the celebrated volumes "As It Was" and "World Without End", her letters to Edward, and separate memoirs of her meetings with W. H. Davies, D. H. Lawrence, Ivor Gurney, Eleanor Farjeon, Robert Frost and W. H. Hudson. The book has been assembled by Myfanwy, the youngest daughter of Edward and Helen. Myfanwy includes her own enchanted account of childhood with her father, and the tragedy of his death at the Battle of Arras in 1917. She adds an appendix of six letters from Robert Frost to Edward Thomas.

Helen wrote "As It Was", the story of her courtship and early marriage, shortly after Edward's death, and "World Without End" a few years later. In the original editions and later reprints fictitious names were used for the protagonists. In this edition the actual names are restored.

The book provides a brilliant, lasting evocation of one of Britain's best-loved poets.

About the Author

Helen Thomas married Edward Thomas (1878-1917) in 1899. In order to support his family, Edward became a prolific writer of essays, introductions, reviews, biographies, and studies of the English and Welsh countryside. Thomas's meeting with Robert Frost in 1913 was the catalyst for his turning to poetry. His first collection was published in 1917, six months after his death in the Arras offensive. Helen was untiring in her efforts to make his work known, and lived to see it firmly established in the cannon of English poetry. They had three children, of whom Myfanwy (b. 1910) is the youngest.

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