When Edward Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917 his poems were largely unpublished But in the years since his death his work has come to be cherished for its rare sustained vision of the natural world & as 'a mirror of England' (Walter de la Mare) This edition drawn from Thomas's manuscripts & typescripts as well as from his published works offers an accessible introduction to this most resonant
- & relevant
- of poets' In his lifetime he was known & loved by a very loving few Now since his death he is known & loved by very many & yearly this is more so There is in his poems & unassumingly profound sense of permanence A war came & ditched him but his poems stay with no other wounds than those which caused them' Dylan Thomas 'A very fine poet & a poet all in his own right The accent is absolutely his own' Robert Frost' The one hundred & forty poems he wrote in the last two years of his life are a miracle I can think of no body of work in English that is more mysterious' Michael Longley