Edward Thomas

Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 - 9 April 1917) was an Anglo-Welsh poet and prose writer.

Edward Thomas circa 1905. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Edward Thomas
Born	March 3 1878(1878-Template:MONTHNUMBER-03) London Borough of Lambeth
Died	April 9 1917(1917-Template:MONTHNUMBER-09) (aged 39) Pas-de-Calais, France
Pen name	Edward Eastaway
Occupation	journalist and poet
Nationality	British
Genres	war poetry

Life

Youth and education

Thomas was born in Lambeth on 3 March 1878, the eldest son of Philip Henry Thomas, staff clerk for light railways and tramways at the Board of Trade, and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Thomas Townsend, of Newport, Monmouthshire. He was of pure Welsh descent on the paternal, and of Welsh and Spanish blood on the maternal side.

He was educated at St. Paul's School, and matriculated at Oxford as a non-collegiate student in 1897, but in the following year was elected to a scholarship in modern history at Lincoln College. He gained a 2nd class in that subject in 1900, and earned a B.A. in the same year.

Thomas early showed a passion both for nature and for literature, his favorite authors being Richard Jefferies, Izaak Walton, and Thomas Malory.

Career

Thomas's earliest book, The Woodland Life, appeared in 1897. 2 years later he married Helen, daughter of James Ashcroft Noble (the critic, who had encouraged him to write).

Thomas settled at Bearsted, Kent, in 1901, moving to The Weald, Sevenoaks, in 1903, and to Petersfield in 1908, maintaining himself by reviewing, and by critical essays and studies of country life. Frequent excursions through the southern counties gave him intimate knowledge and love of rural life and scenery, and his book Richard Jefferies, His Life and Work (1909) is racy of the soil of Wiltshire, its character, history, and farm life.

Sensitive and shy, Thomas guarded himself from the world by a fine, dry irony, which slightly veiled the poet both austere and ardent in his passion for beauty and the homely things of earth. His lofty, melancholy spirit burned in an eye fastidiously grave. His figure was tall and spare, his hair at 30 was bleached gold, his head noble. Among his personal friends were W.H. Hudson, Walter de la Mare, W.H. Davies, and Edward Garnett.

The incessant strain of literary journalism and of producing book after book for publishers, ‘paid at one pound per thousand words’, without respite or hope of popular success, had told seriously on Thomas's health by 1911, and with his deepening anxieties in the next 2 years his tendency to introspective melancholy steadily increased.

By August 1914, the village of Dymock in Gloucestershire had become the residence of a number of literary figures including Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfrid Gibson, and American poet Robert Frost. Thomas was a visitor at this time. The railway station at Adlestrop was immortalised in a well-known poem by Thomas after his train made an unscheduled stop there on 24 June 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I.

In January 1915, inspired by the example of his friend, Robert Frost, Thomas bent all his energies to writing verse.

In July 1915 he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles, but was transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery. He went to France in 1917, and was killed at Arras on 9 April of that year.

He left a son and 2 daughters.

Writing

The little group of imaginative masterpieces, such as ‘Home’, ‘July’, ‘The Flower Gatherer’, ‘Olwen’, ‘A Group of Statuary’, in Rest and Unrest (1910) and Light and Twilight (1911), excel by clear beauty of imagery, grace of contour, and delicate, limpid English. ‘Celtic magic’ and a sensitive freshness and contemplative charm inspire these idylls as well as many pages of The South Country (1909), and In Pursuit of Spring (1914). The range of Thomas's cool, fastidious, critical taste, and of his subtle destructive analysis, is shown in his studies of Swinburne (1912) and Walter Pater (1913).

In his foreword to The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (1920), Walter De La Mare has said:

This intensity of solitude, this impassioned, almost trance-like delight in things natural, simple, short-lived and happy seeming, “lovely of motion, shape and line”, is expressed — even when the clouds of melancholy and of self-distrust lour darkest — on every page of this book. A light shines in it, like that of “cowslips wet with the dew of their birth”. If one word could tell of his all, that word would be England.… When indeed Edward Thomas was killed in Flanders, a mirror of England was shattered, of so true and pure a crystal that a clearer and tenderer reflection can be found in no other than in these poems.

Quotations

• "The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet."

Recognition

Edward Thomas memorial stone, hillside near Steep. Photo by Suzanne Knights. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

W.H. Davies was devastated by Thomas's death, and his commemorative poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" was included in Davies' 1918 collection Raptures..

On 11 November 1985, Thomas was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription, written by fellow Great War poet Wilfred Owen, reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

Thomas is also commemorated by memorial windows in the churches at Steep and at Eastbury in Berkshire.

East Hampshire District Council have created a "literary walk" at Shoulder of Mutton Hill in Steep dedicated to Thomas. which includes the memorial stone erected in 1935. The inscription includes the final line of his essays: "And I rose up and knew I was tired and I continued my journey."

As "Philip Edward Thomas poet-soldier" he is commemorated with "Reginald Townsend Thomas actor-soldier died 1918" (who is buried at the spot) and other family members at the North East Surrey (Old Battersea) Cemetery.

Thomas was described by poet laureate Ted Hughes as "the father of us all."

In popular culture

Many poems about Thomas by other poets can be found in 2 books: Elected Friends: Poems for and about Edward Thomas, edited by Anne Harvey; and Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and contemporary poetry, edited by Guy Cuthbertson and Lucy Newlyn.

In his 1980 autobiography, Ways of Escape, Graham Greene references Thomas's poem "The Other" (about a man who seems to be following his own double from hotel to hotel) in describing his own experience of being bedeviled by an imposter.

Thomas's Collected Poems was included in Andrew Motion's 10 picks for the poetry section of the "Guardian Essential Library" in October 2002.

In his 2002 novel Youth, J.M. Coetzee has his main character, intrigued by the survival of pre-modernist forms in British poetry, ask himself: "What happened to the ambitions of poets here in Britain? Have they not digested the news that Edward Thomas and his world are gone for ever?" In contrast, Irish critic Edna Longley writes that Thomas's Lob, a 150-line poem, "strangely preempts The Waste Land through verses like: "This is tall Tom that bore / The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall / Once talked".

In his 1995 novel, Borrowed Time, novelist Robert Goddard bases the home of the main character at Greenhayes in the village of Steep, where Thomas lived from 1913. Goddard weaves some of the feeling from Thomas's poems into the mood of the story and also uses some quotes from Thomas's works.

Will Self's 2006 novel, The Book of Dave, has a quote from The South Country as the book's epigraph: "I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding sheet and her worms to fill in the graves, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers — as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero."

Children's author Linda Newbery has published a novel, "Lob" (David Fickling Books, 2010, illustrated by Pam Smy) inspired by the Edward Thomas poem of the same name and containing oblique references to other work by Thomas.

Woolly Wolstenholme, formerly of Barclay James Harvest, used a humorous variation of Thomas' poem Adlestrop on the opening song of his 2004 live album, Fiddling Meanly, where he images himself in a retirement home and remembers "the name" of the location where the album was recorded. The poem was read at Wolstenholme's funeral on 19 January 2011.

Publications

Poetry

• Six Poems (as "Edward Eastaway"). Pear Tree Press, 1916.
• Poems. London: Selwyn & Blount, 1917; New York: Holt, 1917.
• Last Poems. London: Selwyn & Blount, 1918.
• Collected Poems. London: Selwyn & Blount, 1920; Seltzer, 1921
  • enlarged edition, Ingpen & Grant, 1928; London: Faber, 1979.
• Two Poems. Ingpen & Grant, 1927.
• Poems (edited by R. George Thomas). Oxford University Press, 1978.
• Edward Thomas: A mirror of England (edited by Elaine Wilson). Paul & Co., 1985.

Novel

• The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans. London: Duckworth, 1913.

Short fiction

• Rest and Unrest. London: Duckworth, 1910; New York: Dutton, 1910.
• Light and Twilight. London: Duckworth, 1911.
• Celtic Stories. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1911; New York: Clarendon, 1913.
• Norse Tales, Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1912.
• Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds (fairy tales). London: Duckworth, 1915.
• A Pilgrim, and other tales (short stories and essays). Tuttle, 1992.
• The Ship of Swallows : A selection of short stories (edited & introduction by Jeremy Hooker; preface by Myfanwy Thomas). London: Enitharmon, 2005.

Non-fiction

• The Woodland Life (essays and diary). Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1897.
• Horae Solitariae. New York: Dutton, 1902.
• Oxford. Black, 1903.
• Rose Acre Papers. Brown, Langham, 1904.
• Beautiful Wales. Black, 1905.
• The Heart of England. New York: Dutton, 1906.
• British Country Life in Spring and Summer: The book of the open air. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1907.
• The South Country. London: Dent, 1909; New York: Dutton, 1909; Tuttle, 1993.
• Rose Acre Papers: Including essays from 'Horae Solitarie'. London: Duckworth, 1910.
• Windsor Castle. Blackie, 1910.
• The Tenth Muse. Secker, 1911.
• The Isle of Wight. Blackie, 1911.
• The Icknield Way (illustrated by A.L. Collins). London: Constable, 1913; New York: Dutton, 1913.
• The Country. London: Batsford, 1913.
• In Pursuit of Spring. Nelson, 1914.
• The Life of the Duke of Marlborough (biography). Chapman & Hall, 1915.
• Cloud Castle, and other papers. New York: Dutton, 1922.
• The Last Sheaf. London: Cape, 1928.
• The Childhood of Edward Thomas (autobiography). London: Faber, 1938.
• The Friend of the Blackbird. Pear Tree Press, 1938.

Criticism

• Richard Jefferies: His life and work. Boston: Little, Brown, 1909.
• Feminine Influence on the Poets. Secker, 1910; John Lane, 1911.
• Maurice Maeterlinck. Dodd, Mead, 1911.
• Algernon Charles Swinburne: A critical study. New York: Kennerley, 1912.
• George Borrow, The Man and His Books''. Dutton, 1912.
• Lafcadio Hearn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.
• Walter Pater: A critical study. London: Martin Secker, 1913; New York: Kennerley, 1913.
• Keats. Dodge, circa 1916.
• A Literary Pilgrim in England. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917; Oxford University Press, 1980.

Collected editions

• The Prose of Edward Thomas (edited by Roland Gant). Falcon Press, 1948.

Edited

• John Dyer, Poems. London: T.F. Unwin, 1903.
• British Butterflies, and other insects. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908.

Letters

• The Letters of Edward Thomas to Jesse Berridge: With a memoir by Jesse Berridge. London: Enitharmon Press, 1983.
• Letters to America, 1914-1917. Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1989.
• Letters to Helen: And an appendix of seven letters to Harry and Janet Hooten. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 2000.

Except where noted bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Audio / video

"Adlestrop" By Edward Thomas Poem animation

"Rain" By Edward Thomas Poem animation

• Edward Thomas (cassette). London: British Council Audio-visual Unit, 1964.
• Edward Thomas (LP). London: Argo, 1974.

Poems by Edward Thomas

1. Adlestrop
2. The Word

See also

• British World War I poets
• Anglo-Welsh poets
• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

Fonds

• Dymock Poets Archive University of Gloucestershire Archives and Special Collections

External links

Poems

• Edward Thomas 1878-1917 at the Poetry Foundation
• Poem of the week: The Thrush by Edward Thomas at The Guardian
• "Edward Eastaway" in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922: "Old Man," "The Word," "The Unknown"
• Edward Thomas at Lost Poets of the Great War (5 poems)
• Edward Thomas profile & 5 poems at the Academy of American Poets.
• Thomas, Edward (6 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• 12 poems by Thomas: "The Thrush," "The Manor Farm," "Digging," "After Rain," "October," "The New Year," "Adlestrop," "March," "Snow," "The Green Roads," "It Was Upon", "In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)"
• Edward Thomas at PoemHunter (92 poems)
• The Edward Thomas Collection in The First World War Poetry Digital Archive at Oxford University contains images of Thomas' War poetry manuscripts, letters, war diary, plus a searchable full text corpora.

Audio / video

• Edward Thomas poems at YouTube

Books

• Works by Edward Thomas at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Edward Thomas at the Internet Archive
• Edward Thomas at Amazon.com

About

• Edward Thomas in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Edward Thomas (1878-1917) at Friends of the Dymock Poets
• Philip Edward Thomas ‎(I10377)‎ at clan-davies.org
• Edward Thomas (1878-1917), War Poets Association
• Edward Thomas at Poets' Graves
• The Edward Thomas Fellowship
• Lost Poets of the Great War, a hypertext document on the poetry of World War I by Harry Rusche, of the English Department, Emory University, Atlanta GA. It contains a bibliography of related materials.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography, 3rd supplement​ (edited by H.W.C. Davis & J.R.H. Weaver). London: Smith, Elder, 1927. Original article is at: Thomas, Philip Edward