Edward Thomas's Poets
Edward Thomas is one of the best-loved of English poets, and a model of integrity for many of his successors. His poetry was written during the space of just two years, before he was killed in the First World War. Those years lie at the heart of "Edward Thomas's Poets": Judy Kendall's gathering of poems and letters embeds that brief period of intense poetic creativity within the wider narrative of Thomas's life.
For the first time, letters by Thomas about writing and publishing are set alongside his poems, revealing the occasions of their composition, illuminating the processes of recollection, revision and development that transformed him into a poet. Interleaved with Thomas's own poems and letters are works by the literary friends whom he criticised and admired, and whose influence he absorbed: Walter de la Mare, W. H. Hudson, Robert Frost, Eleanor Farjeon and others.
Many of the letters included here have not been collected before or are out of print. Enhanced by Judy Kendall's detailed notes and bibliographies, "Edward Thomas's Poets" provides a new perspective on Thomas's reading and writing of poetry, illuminating specific poems and revealing the complex sources of his mature verse.
About the Author
Edward Thomas was born in London in 1878 and was educated at St Paul's School and Lincoln College Oxford. He published his first book, a collection of essays on the country, in 1896, with the encouragement of the critic James Ashcroft Noble. In 1899, while he was still an undergraduate, Thomas married Helen Noble (1877-1967), the daughter of his mentor. Their son Mervyn was born in 1900 and their elder daughter Bronwen in 1903. Myfanwy Thomas, their third child, was born in 1910.
The family moved house frequently, but from 1906 lived in or near Petersfield, Hampshire, an area whose landscape was to have a strong influence on Thomas's poetry. Thomas sought to make a living as a writer, reviewing and publishing essays, anthologies, biographies, guidebooks and country writing. In 1913 his autobiographical novel "The Happy-go-lucky Morgans" was published. He also began to write poetry, but the strain of reconciling his own creativity with the need to earn enough to support his family created periods of deep depression during these years.
In 1913 Thomas met Robert Frost, a friendship that was of profound importance to his own poetry. In 1915 Thomas enlisted in the Artists' Rifles, transferring a year later to the Royal Artillery, where he trained as a map-reading instructor and was commissioned second lieutenant. He volunteered for service overseas and was posted to France in January 1917. On 9 April Thomas was killed at the battle of Arras.
His poetry was published posthumously: "Poems" (1917) under his pseudonym, Edward Eastaway, "Last Poems" in 1918 and his "Collected Poems" in 1920. Helen Thomas's accounts of her life with "Thomas in As it Was" (1926) and "World without End" (1931) were published with Myfanwy Thomas's memoir of her childhood as "Under Storm's Wing" (Carcanet Press, 1988).
