Edward Thomas: A Portrait

by R.GeorgeThomas (Author)

• New

  Hardcover
  1997

  $183.85

  Edward Thomas 1878-1917, published author, critic, and essayist, died at 39, a casualty of World War I. At the suggestion of his friend Robert Frost, Thomas began to write poetry and six months after his death his first book of poems was published. As the prose writer died, the poet was born, and it is on the poems that his reputation still rests. This new biography-based on some 1,800 of Thomas's letters-tells the story of his courtship, his restless marriage, and his tormented need to choose between happiness with his wife and children and the need to find his way as a writer alone. With delicacy and understanding the book describes Thomas's complex character and his pilgrimage on the road to self-discovery, and reveals how the emergence of Thomas the poet became inevitable.

• Used

  Paperback
  1987

  $3.24

  Edward Thomas, poet, essayist, and critic, with some thirty books to his name, was thirty-nine when he was killed in the Arras offensive on Easter Day, 1917. F.R. Leavis singled him out as an original poet of rare quality, and he is generally considered one of the finest poets of the modern era. This luminous biography, based on the author's complete access to the papers of Thomas--including some eighteen hundred letters--offers an intimate glimpse into the life of this great poet, drawing the reader into the strains of Thomas's personal life, revealing the characteristically contrasting sides of Thomas's perceptions, and analyzing his empathy with Robert Frost and the increasing confidence of his last best work in poetry.