Collected Poems of Edward Thomas

Description

Though sometimes classified with Owen, Rosenberg and Sassoon as a 'war poet', he was rather a poet who died tragically in the war, and whose main subjects were the English countryside and its people, and the solitude of the observing self. The present edition offers the complete poems together with detailed editorial apparatus in what has become acknowledged as the standard edition by R. George Thomas. It also includes Thomas's remarkable prose War Diary of 1917.

Edward Thomas was born in Lambeth, London, in 1878, and educated at St Paul's College and Lincoln College, Oxford. Though his reputation is built on his poetry - which he took up at the suggestion of his friend Robert Frost - he was also a prolific writer of prose, much of it dedicated to capturing his love of the English countryside. Thomas voluntarily enlisted in the Artists' Rifles in 1915 and was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916. He was killed in action at Arras on 9 April 1917. He is buried in France and commemorated in Westminster Abbey.

'One of the most distinctive voices of the twentieth century.' P.J. Kavanagh