This fascinating study explores the imagination, life and work of Edward Thomas (1878-1917).

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.

Spring was late in 1913 and Edward Thomas decided to go and search for winter's grave and the tell-tale signs of season's turn - he set out to cycle westwards from London to the Quantocks. Edward Thomas 1878-1917 turned from writing prose to poetry in 1914. His work as a poet has been widely celebrated and admired - Ted Hughes described Thomas as "the father of us all". The Pursuit of Spring, originally published in 1914, bridges the divide between Thomas the journalist/critic and Thomas the highly regarded poet.

Edward Thomas volunteered when he was 37 years old and a father of three and was killed, as an artillery officer, during the first hour of the Arras offensive, on April 9th, 1917. In the two years before his death, he wrote the 144 poems which ensured a place for him among the poets of his generation. Though all his poems had been written OC under stormOCOs wingOCO, Thomas was not a war poet in the sense that Owen, Sassoon or Rosenberg were war poets. Before he turned to poetry in December 1914, he..."

Edward Thomas can be seen as the most important poetry critic in the early twentieth century. Thomas was a prose-writer before he was a poet. The Selected Edition of his prose, and especially this volume, shows that he was also a critic before he was a poet. His unusual literary career opens up key questions about the relation between poetry and criticism, as well as between poetry and prose. Thomas wrote books about poetry, but his criticism mainly took the form of reviews. He reviewed collections, editions, and studies of poetry, most regularly, for the Daily Chronicle and the Morning Post. These reviews amount to a unique commentary on the state of poetry and of poetry criticism after 1900. Since reviewing provided Thomas's main income, he also reviewed other kinds of book. Hence the sheer mass of his reviews, the stress he suffered as a literary journalist. Yet his criticism maintains an astonishingly high standard. Thomas's response to contemporary poetry intersects with his readings of older poetry. No critic or poet of the time was so deeply acquainted with the traditions of English-language poetry or so alert to new poetic movements in Ireland and America. Edward Thomas's writings on poetry have a double importance. Besides suggesting the hidden evolution of his own aesthetic, they constitute a lost history and critique of poetry before the Great War. They change our assumptions about that period. Thomas's perspectives on poets such as Yeats, Hardy, Frost, Lawrence, and Pound illuminate the making of modern poetry.

Edward Thomas can be seen as the most important poetry critic in the early twentieth century. Thomas was a prose-writer before he was a poet. The Selected Edition of his prose, and especially this volume, shows that he was also a critic before he was a poet. His unusual literary career opens up key questions about the relation between poetry and criticism, as well as between poetry and prose. Thomas wrote books about poetry, but his criticism mainly took the form of reviews. He reviewed collections, editions, and studies of poetry, most regularly, for the Daily Chronicle and the Morning Post. These reviews amount to a unique commentary on the state of poetry and of poetry criticism after 1900. Since reviewing provided Thomas's main income, he also reviewed other kinds of book. Hence the sheer mass of his reviews, the stress he suffered as a literary journalist. Yet his criticism maintains an astonishingly high standard. Thomas's response to contemporary poetry intersects with his readings of older poetry. No critic or poet of the time was so deeply acquainted with the traditions of English-language poetry or so alert to new poetic movements in Ireland and America. Edward Thomas's writings on poetry have a double importance. Besides suggesting the hidden evolution of his own aesthetic, they constitute a lost history and critique of poetry before the Great War. They change our assumptions about that period. Thomas's perspectives on poets such as Yeats, Hardy, Frost, Lawrence, and Pound illuminate the making of modern poetry.

Edward Thomas: The Origins of his Poetry builds a new theoretical framework for critical work on imaginative composition through an investigation of Edward Thomas’s composing processes, on material from his letters, his poems and his prose books. It looks at his relation to the land and landscape and includes detailed and illuminating new readings of his poems. It traces connections between Thomas’s approach to composition and the writing and thought of Freud, Woolf and William James, and the influence of Japanese aesthetics, and draws surprising and far-reaching conclusions for the study of poetic composition.