The Annotated Collected Poems

by Edna Longley

  Ms: Thomas’s ‘War Diary’ [1 January – 8 April 1917]. Published text: CP1978. Differences from CP1978: title: The sorrow of true love Last Poem [The sorrow of true love] 2 morrow. morrow: 8 tempest nor tempest and Note: CP1978 follows a transcript of the poem by Edward Cawston Thomas; this edition follows one by Bronwen Simmons and Myfanwy Thomas. Note on title: CP2004 has no title.

  BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE

  1878: Philip Edward Thomas born (3 March) in Lambeth, eldest of six sons. His parents, Philip Henry and Mary Elizabeth Thomas, ‘mainly Welsh’. Family later lives in Wandsworth, Clapham and Balham.

  1883-95: ET attends various London schools including St Paul’s. Spends holidays in Wiltshire. Starts to write about his country walks in manner of Richard Jefferies.

  1894-96: ET mentored by writer and critic, James Ashcroft Noble. Meets Noble’s daughter Helen (1877-1967).

  1896: James Ashcroft Noble dies. Mrs Noble and ET’s parents opposed to increasingly intense relationship between ET and Helen.

  1897: ET’s first book, The Woodland Life, published.

  1898-1900: ET wins History scholarship and goes to Lincoln College, Oxford. Writes for journals such as The Academy and Literature.

  1899: Helen Noble becomes pregnant. She and ET marry at Fulham Registry Office (20 June).

  1900: Philip Merfyn Ashcroft Thomas born. ET gets second-class degree, refuses to enter Civil Service, plans career as freelance writer.

  1901-06: ET and family live in Kent, first near Maidstone (Bearsted), then at Elses Farm near Sevenoaks.

  1901: ET writes occasional reviews for Daily Chronicle.

  1902: Rachel Mary Bronwen Thomas born. Horae Solitariae published. ET begins correspondence with poet Gordon Bottomley. After Lionel Johnson dies, H.W. Nevinson, literary editor of Daily Chronicle, hands on his regular reviewing slot to ET.

  1905: ET meets and helps ‘tramp-poet’ W.H. Davies. Asked to review for Morning Post. Beautiful Wales published.

  1906: ET and family move to Hampshire and live in Berryfield Cottage, first of several rented houses around Steep, Petersfield. The Heart of England published. ET meets W.H. Hudson and Walter de la Mare.

  1907: The Pocket Book of Poems and Songs for the Open Air published. ET goes to Minsmere, Sussex, to work on biography of Richard Jefferies (December).

  1908: ET at Minsmere (January, February). Has romantic feelings for young girl, Hope Webb, whose father forbids him to write to her. ET and Helen distressed. ET contemplates suicide (November).

  1909: ET and family move into house, which they come to dislike, built for them on hilltop at Wick Green. Richard Jefferies and The South Country published.

  1910: Helen Elizabeth Myfanwy Thomas born. Rest and Unrest and Feminine Influence on the Poets published.

  1911: Light and Twilight, Maurice Maeterlinck and Celtic Stories published. ET has severe breakdown (September).

  1912: ET undergoes psychotherapy with Godwin Baynes. Writing Walter Pater. Algernon Charles Swinburne, George Borrow, Lafcadio Hearn and Norse Tales published. While a paying guest at Selsfield House, East Grinstead home of Vivian Locke Ellis, ET begins autobiographical novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (November).

  1913: ET depressed and suicidal at times. The Icknield Way published. ET and family move into small Yew Tree Cottage in Steep village. Meets Robert Frost at St George’s Restaurant, London (6 October). Begins autobiography (The Childhood of Edward Thomas) while staying at Selsfield House (December).

  1914: ET writes three glowing reviews of Frost’s North of Boston. In Pursuit of Spring published. ET and family take holiday near Frosts at Ledington, Gloucestershire (August). ET travels in England, preparing articles for English Review about impact of war (September). War dries up book-commissions and reviewing opportunities. ET writes first poems (December).

  1915: ET writing poems. Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, This England and The Life of the Duke of Marlborough published. ET considers joining Frost in US, but enlists in Artists’ Rifles (July). Sent to camp at High Beech, near Loughton, Essex (October). Moved to Hare Hall Camp, Gidea Park, Romford, Essex, and promoted to Lance-Corporal (November). Acts as map-reading instructor.

  1916: ET writing poems. Keats published. ET promoted to Corporal (March). Awarded £300 from Civil List and applies for commission in Royal Artillery (June). Accepted (July). Trains as officer cadet with Artillery in London and moves family from Steep to High Beech (September). Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant (November). Posted to 244 Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, Lydd, Kent. Volunteers for service overseas (December). Six Poems by Edward Eastaway published. Selwyn & Blount accept Poems.

  1917: ET given embarkation leave, writes last poem and begins ‘War Diary’ (January). Embarks from Southampton (29 January). Positioned near Arras (11 February). After spell at Group HQ, ET rejoins Battery (9 March). Takes up duty at Observation Post. Killed by shell-blast as Arras ‘offensive’ begins (9 April). Buried in military cemetery in village of Agny. Poems by Edward Eastaway published posthumously.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  1. Manuscripts, Typescripts & Printings of Poems

  AANP: An Annual of New Poetry (London: Constable, 1917)

  B: Manuscript poems in Bodleian Library, MS. Don. d. 28

  BC: Manuscript poems and typescripts (also prose) in Berg Collection, New York Public Library, Berg Coll MSS Thomas, E

  BL: Manuscript poems in British Library, Add. MS. 44990

  CP1920: Edward Thomas, Collected Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1920)

  CP1928: Edward Thomas, Collected Poems (New Edition), (London: Ingpen & Grant, 1928)

  CP1944: Edward Thomas, Collected Poems (New Edition), (London: Faber & Faber, 1944)

  CP1949: Edward Thomas, CP1944 (Fifth Impression), (London: Faber & Faber, 1949)

  CP1978: (Ed.) R. George Thomas, The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)

  CP2004: Edward Thomas, Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 2004)

  *JT: Typescript poems, once owned by Thomas’s brother Julian Thomas

  LML: Manuscript poems (also prose) in Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo

  LP: Edward Thomas, Last Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1918)

  *M1: Green notebook of manuscript poems, once owned by Thomas’s son Merfyn, now in National Library of Wales

  *M2: Blue notebook of manuscript poems, once owned by Thomas’s son Merfyn, now in National Library of Wales

  *MET: Typescript poems, once owned by Thomas’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Thomas

  P: Edward Eastaway, Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1917; facsimile ed., London: Imperial War Museum, 1997)

  PTP: Printer’s typescript of P, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. poet. d. 214

  RB: Root and Branch, A Seasonal of the Arts, edited by James Guthrie 1913-1918

  SP: Edward Eastaway, Six Poems (Flansham, Sussex: The Pear Tree Press, 1916; facsimile ed., Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 2005)

  TE: (Ed.) Edward Thomas, This England: An Anthology from her Writers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1915)

  TP: Edward Thomas, Two Poems [‘The Lane’ & ‘The Watchers’], (London: Ingpen & Grant, 1927)

  * Photocopies of these (and other) mss and typescripts are among the archival materials assembled in the Edward Thomas Collection, Cardiff University Library. The abbreviations used for them here are identical with those in CP1978.

  2. Memoirs, Letters, Diaries, Notebooks

  CET: Edward Thomas, The Childhood of Edward Thomas (London: Faber & Faber, 1938, 1983); 1983 ed. includes Thomas’s ‘War Diary’, as does CP1978

  EF: Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958; repr. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997)

  FNB: Numbered field notebooks [up to end of 1915] of Edward Thomas, Berg Collection, New York Public Library

  HT: Helen Thomas, with Myfanwy Thomas, Under Storm’s Wing (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1988), containing Helen Thomas’s memoirs, As I
t Was (1926) and World Without End (1931)

  LA: (Ed.) R. George Thomas, Edward Thomas: Letters to America 1914-1917 (Edinburgh: The Tregara Press, 1989): cited only for letters to Thomas’s aunt, Margaret Townsend (letters to Robert Frost also included)

  LEG: Edward Thomas, A Selection of Letters to Edward Garnett (Edinburgh: The Tregara Press, 1981)

  LGB: (Ed.) R. George Thomas, Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley (London: Oxford University Press, 1968)

  LJB: (Ed.) Anthony Berridge, The Letters of Edward Thomas to Jesse Berridge (London: Enitharmon Press, 1983)

  LTH: (Ed.) R. George Thomas, Edward Thomas: Letters to Helen (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2000)

  LWD: Letters from Edward Thomas to Walter de la Mare, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 376

  MT: Myfanwy Thomas, One Of These Fine Days: Memoirs (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1982)

  NLW: Edward Thomas diaries (1900-1911), NLW MSS 22900-22913; letters from Edward Thomas to Helen Thomas (1896-1917), NLW MSS 22914-22917, National Library of Wales

  RFET: (Ed.) Matthew Spencer, Elected Friends: Robert Frost & Edward Thomas to one another (New York: Handsel Books, 2003)

  SL: (Ed.) R. George Thomas, Edward Thomas: Selected Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)

  SLRF: (Ed.) Lawrance Thompson, Selected Letters of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1964; London: Jonathan Cape, 1965)

  Note: transcriptions from notebooks, diaries and letters sometimes differ slightly from those in CP1978, SL and LTH. Ampersands and other abbreviations have been translated, except where reproduced from published versions.

  3. Prose by Edward Thomas

  ACS: Algernon Charles Swinburne: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker, 1912)

  BW: Beautiful Wales (London: A. & C. Black, 1905)

  CC: Cloud Castle and other Papers (London: Duckworth, 1922)

  COE: The Chessplayer & other essays (Manor Farm, Andoversford, Gloucestershire: The Whittington Press, 1981)

  CS: Celtic Stories (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911)

  FIP: Feminine Influence on the Poets (London: Martin Secker, 1910)

  FTB: Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds (London: Duckworth, 1915; facsimile ed., Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 2001)

  GB: George Borrow: The Man and his Books (London: Chapman & Hall, 1912)

  HE: The Heart of England (London: J.M. Dent, 1906)

  HGLM: The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (London: Duckworth, 1913)

  HS: Horae Solitariae (London: Duckworth, 1902)

  IOW: The Isle of Wight (London: Blackie & Son, 1911)

  IPS: In Pursuit of Spring (London: Thomas Nelson & Son, 1914)

  IW: The Icknield Way (London: Constable, 1913)

  K: Keats (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1916; facsimile ed., Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 1999)

  LAT: Light and Twilight (London: Duckworth, 1911)

  LDM: The Life of the Duke of Marlborough (London: Chapman & Hall, 1915)

  LH: Lafcadio Hearn (London: Constable, 1912)

  LPE: A Literary Pilgrim in England (London: Methuen, 1917)

  LS: The Last Sheaf (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)

  MM: Maurice Maeterlinck (London: Methuen, 1911)

  NT: Norse Tales (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912)

  O: Oxford (London: A. & C. Black, 1903; repr. with Introduction and Notes by Lucy Newlyn, Oxford: Signal Books, 2005)

  RAP: Rose Acre Papers (London: S.C. Brown, Langham & Co., 1904)

  RJ: Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work (London: Hutchinson, 1909; repr. London: Faber & Faber, 1978)

  RR: Introduction to William Cobbett, Rural Rides (London: J.M. Dent, 1912)

  RU: Rest and Unrest (London: Duckworth, 1910)

  SC: The South Country (London: J.M. Dent, 1909)

  TC: The Country (London: B.T. Batsford, 1913; facsimile ed., Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 1999)

  TWL: The Woodland Life (Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood, 1897)

  WP: Walter Pater: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker, 1913)

  Note: Other books edited or introduced by Thomas are cited in the Notes. The most important of these is his anthology The Pocket Book of Poems and Songs for the Open Air (London: E. Grant Richards, 1907).

  4. Biography, Criticism etc.

  AM: Andrew Motion, The Poetry of Edward Thomas (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980)

  ETFN: Edward Thomas Fellowship Newsletter

  GC: Guy Cuthbertson, ‘The Literary Geography in Edward Thomas’s Work’, unpublished thesis, Oxford University, 2004

  HC: H. Coombes, Edward Thomas (Chatto & Windus, 1956)

  JB: (Ed.) Jonathan Barker, The Art of Edward Thomas (Bridgend: Poetry Wales Press, 1987)

  JK: (Ed.) Judy Kendall, Edward Thomas’s Poets (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2007)

  JM: John Moore, The Life and Letters of Edward Thomas (London: Heinemann, 1939)

  JP: John Pikoulis, ‘On Editing Edward Thomas’, PN Review 21, 5 (May-June, 1995)

  MK: Michael Kirkham, The Imagination of Edward Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

  RGT: R. George Thomas, Edward Thomas: A Portrait (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)

  SS: Stan Smith, Edward Thomas (London: Faber & Faber, 1986)

  VS: Vernon Scannell, Edward Thomas (London: Longman’s, Green & Co., 1963)

  WC: William Cooke, Edward Thomas: A Critical Biography (London: Faber & Faber, 1970)

  WW: W.M. Whiteman, The Edward Thomas Country (Southampton: Paul Cave, nd)

  FURTHER BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology (London: Routledge, 1991); The Song of the Earth (London: Picador, 2000)

  (Eds) Guy Cuthbertson and Lucy Newlyn, Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry (London: Enitharmon Press, 2007)

  (Ed.) Richard Emeny, Edward Thomas on the Georgians (Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 2004)

  (Eds) Richard Emeny & Jeff Cooper, Edward Thomas: A Checklist (Blackburn: White Sheep Press, 2004)

  David Gervais, Literary Englands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

  (Ed.) Anne Harvey, Elected Friends: Poems for and about Edward Thomas (London: Enitharmon Press, 1991); Adlestrop Revisited (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Henry Sutton, 1999)

  Matthew Hollis: Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas (London: Faber & Faber, 2011).

  Peter Howarth, British Poetry in the Age of Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

  Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England (London: Routledge, 2003)

  (Ed.) Trevor Johnson, Edward Thomas on Thomas Hardy (Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 2002)

  Edna Longley, Poetry & Posterity (Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2000); (ed.) A Language Not to be Betrayed: Selected prose of Edward Thomas (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1981)*

  John Lucas, Starting to Explain: Essays on Twentieth Century British and Irish Poetry (Nottingham: Trent Books, 2003)

  Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life (New York: Owl Books, 1999)

  Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt (London: Faber & Faber, 1967)

  (Ed.) Vincent Sherry, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

  Stuart Sillars, Structure and Dissolution in English Writing, 1910-1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999)

  Sean Street, The Dymock Poets (Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan: Seren Books, 1994)

  Theresa Whistler, The Life of Walter de la Mare (London: Duckworth, 1993)

  * Note: Most reviews by Thomas, quoted in the Notes, can be found here.

  INDEX OF TITLES

  Adlestrop 1

  After Rain 1

  After you speak 1

  Ambition 1

  And you, Helen 1

  April 1

  Ash Grove, The 1

  Aspens 1

  As the team’s head-brass 1

  Barn, The 1

  Barn and the Down, The 1

  Beauty 1

  Birds’ Nests 1

  Bridge,
The 1

  Bright Clouds 1

  Brook, The 1

  But these things also 1

  Cat, A 1

  Celandine 1

  Chalk-Pit, The 1

  Cherry Trees, The 1

  Child in the Orchard, The 1

  Child on the Cliffs, The 1

  Cock-Crow 1

  Combe, The 1