Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography
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.
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Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography
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.
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Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography

Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography

by Jean Moorcroft Wilson
Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography

Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography

by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

eBook

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781408187159
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 05/21/2015
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 496
File size: 6 MB

About the Author

Jean Moorcroft Wilson is an eminent literary biographer, a lecturer at Birkbeck College and a leading expert on First World War Literature. She is the author of biographies of Siegfried Sassoon, Charles Hamilton Sorley and Isaac Rosenberg and is married to the nephew of Virginia Woolf.
Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a celebrated biographer and leading expert on the First World War poets. Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper biography prize for her Isaac Rosenberg, she has also written biographies of Siegfried Sassoon, Charles Hamilton Sorley and Edward Thomas. She has lectured for many years at the University of London, as well as in the United States and South Africa. She is married to the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, on whom she has also written a widely-praised biography of place.

Table of Contents

Map of 'The Edward Thomas Country', Steep, Hampshire
List of Illustrations
Family Trees of Edward Thomas's Father and Mother
Line Drawing of Edward Thomas by Ernest Thomas

Introduction
1 Beginnings (1878-1880)
2 'All Being, Doing and Suffering' (1880-1888)
3 'The Foolish Years' (1889-1893)
4 St Paul's and Helen Noble: Alone Together (1894-1897)
5 A Glimpse of Paradise (October 1897-September 1898)
6 Paradise Gained (1898-1899)
7 Paradise Lost (1899-1900)
8 Grub Street (September 1900-September 1901)
9 Rose Acre Cottage (October 1901-July 1903)
10 'The Valley of the Shadow': Ivy Cottage, Bearsted Green (July 1903-May 1904)
11 Elses Farm (May 1904-October 1906)
12 Berryfield Cottage: 'When First I Came Here I Had Hope' (December 1909-December 1910)
13 Hope and Loss of Hope (January 1907-December 1909)
14 'Your Hurried and Harried Prose Man': Wick Green (December 1909-December 1910)
15 The Bax-Baynes Effect (1911-1912)
16 Pursued by the Other in Pursuit of Spring (January-September 1913)
17 'The Only Brother I Ever Had' (6 October 1913-March 1914)
18 'While We Two Walked Slowly Together': Thomas and Frost in Gloucestershire (April-July 1914)
19 The Sun Used to Shine (August-September 1914)
20 The Road Taken (September-November 1914)
21 'The Only Begetter' (December 1914)
22 This England (January-February 1915)
23 Marlborough and the Fields of Flanders (March-July 1915)
24 The Extreme Decision (July-November 1915)
25 'A Heart that was Dark' (November 1915-August 1916)
26 The Long Goodbye (August 1916-January 1917)
27 'No More Goodbyes Now' (January-April 1917)

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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