Edward Thomas
Biography of Edward Thomas

Phillip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.
Early Life
Thomas was born in Lambeth, London. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School, St Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford. His family were mostly Welsh. Unusually, he married while still an undergraduate and determined to live his life by the pen. He then worked as a book reviewer, reviewing up to 15 books every week. He was already a seasoned writer by the outbreak of war, having published widely as a literary critic and biographer, as well as a writer on the countryside. He also wrote a novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (1913).
Thomas worked as literary critic for the Daily Chronicle in London and became a close friend of Welsh tramp poet W. H. Davies, whose career he almost single-handedly developed.
From 1905, Thomas lived with his wife Helen and their family at Elses Farm near Sevenoaks, Kent. He rented a tiny cottage nearby for Davies and nurtured his writing as best he could. On one occasion, Thomas even had to arrange for the manufacture, by a local wheelwright, of a makeshift wooden leg for Davies.
Even though Thomas thought that poetry was the highest form of literature and regularly reviewed it, he only became a poet himself at the end of 1914. Living at Steep, in East Hampshire, he initially published some poetry under the name Edward Eastaway.
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. Edward Thomas was a visitor at this time.
The (now-abandoned) railway station at Adlestrop in the Cotswolds 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 the First World War.
War Service
Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting, in part after reading Frost's "The Road Not Taken". He was promoted Corporal and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was killed in action soon after he arrived in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917. Although he survived the actual battle, he was killed by the concussive blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe.
Close friend W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and his commemorative poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" was included in Davies' 1918 collection "Raptures".
Thomas is buried in the Military Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43).
Personal Life
Thomas was survived by his wife, Helen, his son Merfyn and his two daughters Bronwen and Myfanwy.
After the war, Helen wrote about her courtship and early married life with Edward in the autobiography As it Was (1926); later she added a second volume, World Without End (1931). Myfanwy later said the books were written by her mother as a form of therapy to help lift her out of a deep depression to which she succumbed following Edward's death.
Helen's short memoir My Memory of W. H. Davies was published in 1973. Her Under Storm's Wing was published in 1997 and is a collection of writings including the two earlier autobiographies along with various other writings and letters.
Commemorations
Thomas is commemorated in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey in London and 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.
Poetry
Thomas's poems are noted for their attention to the English countryside and a certain colloquial style. A short poem of Thomas's serves as an example of how he blends war and countryside throughout his poetry.
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."
Edward Thomas's Works:
Poetry Collections
Six Poems, under pseudonym Edward Eastaway, Pear Tree Press, 1916.
Poems, Holt, 1917.
Last Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1918.
Collected Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1920.
Two Poems, Ingpen & Grant, 1927.
The Poems of Edward Thomas, R. George Thomas (ed), Oxford University Press, 1978
Poemoj (Esperanto translation), Kris Long (ed & pub), Burleigh Print, Bracknell, Berks, 1979.
Edward Thomas: A Mirror of England, Elaine Wilson (ed), Paul & Co., 1985.
The Poems of Edward Thomas, Peter Sacks (ed), Handsel Books, 2003.
The Annotated Collected Poems, Edna Longley (ed), Bloodaxe Books, 2008.
Fiction
The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (novel), 1913
Essay Collections
Horae Solitariae, Dutton, 1902.
Oxford, A & C Black, 1903.
Beautiful Wales, Black, 1905.
The Heart of England, Dutton, 1906.
The South Country, Dutton, 1906 (reissued by Tuttle, 1993).
Rest and Unrest, Dutton, 1910.
Light and Twilight, Duckworth, 1911.
The Last Sheaf, Cape, 1928.
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Edward Thomas Poems
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Rain
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks -
Adlestrop
Yes, I remember Adlestrop -- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. -
Like The Touch Of Rain
Like the touch of rain she was On a man's flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise: -
The Cherry Trees
The cherry trees bend over and are shedding, On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed. -
Words
Out of us all That make rhymes Will you choose Sometimes - -
Beauty
WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph- -
A Cat
She had a name among the children; But no one loved though someone owned Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime And had her kittens duly drowned. -
The Owl
DOWNHILL I came, hungry, and yet not starved, Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the north wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof. -
The Glory
The glory of the beauty of the morning, - The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew; The blackbird that has found it, and the dove That tempts me on to something sweeter than love; -
Aspens
All day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. -
As The Team's Head- Brass
As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed the angle of the fallow, and -
Celandine
Thinking of her had saddened me at first, Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame, A living thing, not what before I nursed, -
Tall Nettles
TALL nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. -
No One So Much As You
No one so much as you Loves this my clay, Or would lament as you Its dying day.
Celandine
Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.
She found the celandines of February
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