Edward Thomas From Adlestrop To Arras

This is the extraordinary life of a poetic genius. Along with Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas is by any reckoning a major first world war poet. A war poet is not one who chooses to commemorate or celebrate a war, but one who reacts against having a war thrust upon him. His great friend Robert Frost wrote 'his poetry is so very brave, so unconsciously brave.' Apart from a most illuminating understanding of his poetry, Dr Wilson shows how Thomas' life alone makes for absorbing reading: his early marriage, his dependence on laudanum, his friendships with Joseph Conrad, Edward Garnett, Rupert Brooke and Hilaire Belloc among others. The novelist Eleanor Farjeon entered into a curious menage a trois with him and his wife. He died in France in 1917, on the first day of the Battle of Arras. This is the stuff of which myths are made and posterity has been quick to oblige. But this has tended to obscure his true worth as a writer, as Dr Wilson argues. Edward Thomas's poems were not published until some months after his death, but they have never since been out of print. Described by Ted Hughes as 'the father of us all', Thomas's distinctively modern sensibility is probably the one most in tune with our twenty-first century outlook. He occupies a crucial place in the development of twentieth century poetry.

This is the extraordinary life of a poetic genius. Along with Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas is by any reckoning a major first world war poet. A war poet is not one who chooses to commemorate or celebrate a war, but one who reacts against having a war thrust upon him. His great friend Robert Frost wrote 'his poetry is so very brave, so unconsciously brave.' Apart from a most illuminating understanding of his poetry, Dr Wilson shows how Thomas' life alone makes for absorbing reading: his early marriage, his dependence on laudanum, his friendships with Joseph Conrad, Edward Garnett, Rupert Brooke and Hilaire Belloc among others. The novelist Eleanor Farjeon entered into a curious menage a trois with him and his wife. He died in France in 1917, on the first day of the Battle of Arras. This is the stuff of which myths are made and posterity has been quick to oblige. But this has tended to obscure his true worth as a writer, as Dr Wilson argues. Edward Thomas's poems were not published until some months after his death, but they have never since been out of print. Described by Ted Hughes as 'the father of us all', Thomas's distinctively modern sensibility is probably the one most in tune with our twenty-first century outlook. He occupies a crucial place in the development of twentieth century poetry.

Edward Thomas volunteered when he was 37 years old and a father of three and was killed, as an artillery officer, during the first hour of the Arras offensive, on April 9th, 1917. In the two years before his death, he wrote the 144 poems which ensured a place for him among the poets of his generation. Though all his poems had been written OC under stormOCOs wingOCO, Thomas was not a war poet in the sense that Owen, Sassoon or Rosenberg were war poets. Before he turned to poetry in December 1914, he..."

Philip Edward Thomas was born on 3rd March, 1878 at 14 Lansdowne Gardens in Stockwell, Lambeth, which was then a part of Surrey. His family had a rich Welsh heritage. Thomas was educated at Battersea Grammar School before proceeding to St Paul's School in London and then becoming a history scholar, between 1898-1900, at Lincoln College, Oxford. Whilst still studying for his degree he married Helen Berenice Noble in June, 1899, in Fulham, London. Thomas had already decided by this time to fashion a career out of literature. As a book reviewer he reviewed in the order of fifteen books a week and began to be published as both a literary critic, for the Daily Chronicle, and as a biographer. His writing talents also extended to writing on the countryside and, in 1913, a novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans was published. Thomas is also responsible for the shepherding and mentoring of the career of maverick tramp poet W. H. Davies during the early years of the 20th Century. Despite Davies's years of wanderlust he was encouraged to take up accommodation in a small cottage near to where Thomas, Helen and his family lived at Elses Farm, near Sevenoaks in Kent. Ironically although Thomas believed that poetry was the highest form of literature and reviewed poetry books often it was only in 1914 that he began to write poetry himself. By this time, he was living at Steep, East Hampshire, and his early poems were published under the pseudonym of 'Edward Eastaway'. The American poet Robert Frost, who was living in England at the time, went to some lengths to encourage Thomas to continue writing poetry. Their friendship became so close that they planned to reside side by side in the United States. Frost's classic poem, "The Road Not Taken," was inspired by his long walks with Thomas and the latter's indecisiveness about which route to take. Thomas wrote several revered poems. For many his lines on the now abandoned railway station at Adlestrop, written after his train made a stop at the Cotswolds station on 24th June, 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War are his best. Europe was now to be engulfed in a monumental armed struggle and many writers, poets and painters heeded the call to become part of the tide of humanity to serve their countries. Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting without too much difficulty. He was promoted to corporal, and by November 1916 had been commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. Philip Edward Thomas was killed in action soon after his arrival in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917. To soften the blow to his widow Helen, a fiction was concocted of a "bloodless death"; that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave from an exploding shell as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. (It was only decades later that a letter from his commanding officer, Franklin Lushington, written in 1936, was discovered stating that Thomas had been "shot clean through the chest.") W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and his commemorative poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" is a moving tribute to the loss of his friend. Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43). As a poet Thomas's career was short but he has been grouped with the War Poets though his output of war poems is short in number, especially when set against those that feature the countryside. Aside from his poems and a novel Thomas wrote frequent essays and a number of travel books. On Armistice Day, 11th November, 1985, Thomas was among the 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.

Edward Thomas is a paradox. One of our most highly-regarded poets, and author of one of the nation's favourite poems, "Adlestrop", Thomas is also one of the least-known British poets. These essays bridge that gap by offering fresh appraisals of his work. The volume includes a word-and-image response to Thomas's poem to his wife "And you, Helen", by poet Deryn Rees-Jones and artist Charlotte Hodes; new research by Ralph Pite on Thomas's relationship with American poet Robert Frost; and a discussion of Thomas as a "War Poet" by distinguished scholar Jean Moorcraft Wilson, author of the most recent, highly-praised biography of the poet. This celebratory centenary volume, edited by two of the leading poetry specialists in Europe, Adrian Grafe and Andrew McKeown, sheds new light on Edward Thomas and the roads his poems have travelled, a century after his death at the Battle of Arras on April 9th 1917.

Edward Thomas can be seen as the most important poetry critic in the early twentieth century. Thomas was a prose-writer before he was a poet. The Selected Edition of his prose, and especially this volume, shows that he was also a critic before he was a poet. His unusual literary career opens up key questions about the relation between poetry and criticism, as well as between poetry and prose. Thomas wrote books about poetry, but his criticism mainly took the form of reviews. He reviewed collections, editions, and studies of poetry, most regularly, for the Daily Chronicle and the Morning Post. These reviews amount to a unique commentary on the state of poetry and of poetry criticism after 1900. Since reviewing provided Thomas's main income, he also reviewed other kinds of book. Hence the sheer mass of his reviews, the stress he suffered as a literary journalist. Yet his criticism maintains an astonishingly high standard. Thomas's response to contemporary poetry intersects with his readings of older poetry. No critic or poet of the time was so deeply acquainted with the traditions of English-language poetry or so alert to new poetic movements in Ireland and America. Edward Thomas's writings on poetry have a double importance. Besides suggesting the hidden evolution of his own aesthetic, they constitute a lost history and critique of poetry before the Great War. They change our assumptions about that period. Thomas's perspectives on poets such as Yeats, Hardy, Frost, Lawrence, and Pound illuminate the making of modern poetry.

Spring was late in 1913 and Edward Thomas decided to go and search for winter's grave and the tell-tale signs of season's turn - he set out to cycle westwards from London to the Quantocks.Edward Thomas 1878-1917 turned from writing prose to poetry in 1914. His work as a poet has been widely celebrated and admired - Ted Hughes described Thomas as "the father of us all".The Pursuit of Spring, originally published in 1914, bridges the divide between Thomas the journalist/critic and Thomas the highly regarded poet.