Edward Thomas wrote a lifetime's poetry in two years. Already a
dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only
in December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at
Arras. Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about
the trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and
generic range expose the limits of that category too. A central
figure in modern poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade
English poetry in the early 20th century.
Edna Longley published an earlier edition of Thomas's poetry in
1973. Her work advanced his reputation as a major modern poet. Now
she has produced a revised version, which includes all his poems and
draws on freshly available archive material. The extensive Notes
contain substantial quotations from Thomas's prose, letters and
notebooks, as well as a new commentary on the poems.
The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas's poems helps us to
understand their depth and complexity, together with their contexts
in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in English
poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas's criticism feeds into
his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as
'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this
edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small
but significant ways from that of other extant collections of
Thomas's poems.
