Edward Thomas: A Miscellany

by Edward Thomas, Anna Stenning (Editor)

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France. Nowadays there is a significant re-discovery of Thomas as a nature writer and poet. It is perhaps easy to think that Edward Thomas belonged to a long-distant past a world where footpaths go on for ever, summer days are long, hot and full of bird song; and followed by dark and starry nights. But during Thomas's life between 1878 and 1917, the traditional social life of the countryside had almost disappeared. Even where it hadn't, someone like Edward Thomas, a middle-class Londoner, would not have belonged to it. He wrote about villages, inns, wildlife and folk music, but it was from the perspective of an enthusiastic outsider. Edward Thomas compiled a number of anthologies on nature, literature and poetry. One of them is an inspiration for this book, the collection A Pocket Book of Poems and Songs For the Open Air. This selection of Edward Thomas's poems and prose serves the same purpose.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.

His Works:

Poetry collections:

Six Poems, under pseudonym Edward Eastaway, Pear Tree Press, 1916.
Poems, Holt, 1917.
Last Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1918.
Collected Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1920.
Two Poems, Ingpen & Grant, 1927.
The Poems of Edward Thomas, R. George Thomas (ed), Oxford University Press, 1978
Poemoj (Esperanto translation), Kris Long (ed & pub), Burleigh Print, Bracknell, Berks, 1979.
Edward Thomas: A Mirror of England, Elaine Wilson (ed), Paul & Co., 1985.
The Poems of Edward Thomas, Peter Sacks (ed), Handsel Books, 2003.
The Annotated Collected Poems, Edna Longley (ed), Bloodaxe Books, 2008.

Fiction:

The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (novel), 1913

Essay collections:

Horae Solitariae, Dutton, 1902.
Oxford, A & C Black, 1903.
Beautiful Wales, Black, 1905.
The Heart of England, Dutton, 1906.
The South Country, Dutton, 1906 (reissued by Tuttle, 1993).
Rest and Unrest, Dutton, 1910.
Light and Twilight, Duckworth, 1911.
The Last Sheaf, Cape, 1928.

Reviews

[Allan Wellings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edward Thomas was a British writer and poet who met an untimely death in 1917 on the Western Front. This miscellany collects poems and fragments of articles that are now largely out of print and gives a glimpse of a country undergoing profound change. A Londoner who identified as Welsh, a keen observer of nature and a wanderer who walked across the landscape of England and Wales. Read it once and then dip into it occasionally - some places deserve to be revisited.