Edward Thomas Fellowship   Edward Thomas 1878 - 1917
Studio portrait of Edward Thomas, 1898/99.         Edward Thomas with his son Merfyn, 1900.         Edward Thomas at High Beech, 1916.	Edward Thomas was known during his lifetime as a critic, essayist and writer of books about the countryside. Born in London, his happiest days as a youth were spent either wandering over the commons of South London or with relatives in the countryside near Swindon. Wiltshire was to remain his favourite county. As a schoolboy, Thomas was encouraged to write by James Ashcroft Noble, who had recognised the boy's talent and was himself a distinguished man of letters and a neighbour. At Noble's home, Thomas met and fell in love with Helen Noble, whom he subsequently married while still an undergraduate at Oxford University. After gaining a second-class degree in History, he decided to pursue a career as a writer, having been encouraged by the publication of some nature essays and especially his first book, The Woodland Life, while he was still a student. That decision, opposed by his father, led to years of poorly paid prose writing, both books and journalism. Life was a struggle for Helen, the three children and himself. Undoubtedly, this contributed to sporadic depressive illness. Nevertheless, his prose work established him amongst the foremost critics of the day. He was moving towards the writing of poetry when, in 1913, he met and became close friends with the American poet Robert Frost, who further encouraged him to write verse, which he commenced in December 1914. Into the next two years, he crammed all his verse writing. Before he saw his poetry in print under his own name, he was killed at the Battle of Arras on Easter Day 1917. Since then, Thomas's reputation as a poet has increased greatly and, perhaps as important, his posthumous influence on the development of English verse has been crucial. Poets as diverse as WH Auden, Philip Larkin and Derek Walcott have acknowledged their debt to him. Chronological List of Significant Works The Woodland Life, 1897 Horae Solitaire, 1902 Oxford, 1903 Rose Acre Papers, 1904 Beautiful Wales, 1905 The Heart of England, 1906 Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work, 1909 The South Country, 1909 Windsor Castle, 1910 Rest and Unrest, 1910 Feminine Influence on the Poets, 1910 Light and Twilight, 1911 Maurice Maeterlinck, 1911 The Tenth Muse, 1911 Celtic Stories, 1911 The Isle of Wight, 1911 Lafcadio Hearn, 1912 Norse Tales, 1912 Algernon Charles Swinburne: A Critical Study, 1912 George Borrow: The Man and his Books, 1912 The Country, 1913 The Icknield Way, 1913 The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans, 1913 Walter Pater: A Critical Study, 1913 In Pursuit of Spring, 1914 Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds, 1915 The Life of The Duke of Marlborough, 1915 Keats, 1916 Six Poems [by "Edward Eastaway"], 1916 A Literary Pilgrim in England, 1917 Published posthumously:~ Poems, 1917 Last Poems, 1918 Collected Poems, 1920 Cloud Castle and other Papers, 1922 The Last Sheaf: Essays by Edward Thomas, 1928 The Childhood of Edward Thomas, 1938 The Friend of the Blackbird, 1938
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