Edward Thomas: a Poet for His Country

"When in 1915 Edward Thomas... was asked by a friend what he thought he was fighting for, he bent down and picked up a pinch of earth. 'Literally, for this', he answered."

Edward Thomas, the eldest of six sons to Welsh parents, was born in London in 1878.

From humble beginnings, Thomas, a shy young man who was often disillusioned, went on to become one of the most distinctive voices in modern British poetry.

Influenced by late Victorian traditions, Thomas also...
More Description

"When in 1915 Edward Thomas... was asked by a friend what he thought he was fighting for, he bent down and picked up a pinch of earth. 'Literally, for this', he answered."

Edward Thomas, the eldest of six sons to Welsh parents, was born in London in 1878.

From humble beginnings, Thomas, a shy young man who was often disillusioned, went on to become one of the most distinctive voices in modern British poetry.

Influenced by late Victorian traditions, Thomas also found inspiration in his close friendships with his own contemporaries, including the American poet Robert Frost.

Although, as Marsh notes, the lucidity of his work renders it timeless and often neither Victorian, Georgian, or truly modern.

His early work illustrates a profound love for the English countryside; its landscape, inhabitants and ancient traditions.

Thomas's own personal anxieties also feature heavily in his writing, revealing the torment of restlessness and guilt he later felt within his own marriage, his lack of contentment and his angst surrounding questions of death.

In 1915, Thomas enlisted in the army, a journey which would be his last, and one which married his intense patriotism with his fear of death.

In Edward Thomas: A Poet for His Country,, Jan Marsh draws on the major events of Thomas's life, his prose and his poetry, and Helen Thomas's memoirs, to place the work of the poet Edward Thomas in 'the context of his life as a whole.'

Praise for Jan Marsh

"An excellent addition to Bloomsbury studies that will be of interest to both devotees and newcomers." - Publishers Weekly

"Jan Marsh's book is the best researched and fullest biography of Rossetti we have yet had." - Fiona MacCarthy, New York Review of Books

"The author's steady, sympathetic course through Rossetti's divided life enables readers to delve into the intense and original self most fully expressed in her poetry." - Kirkus Review

Jan Marsh (b.1942) has written a number of ground-breaking biographies, including Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, Jane and May Morris, The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal and her highly acclaimed work Christina Rossetti. She has also scripted arts documentary programmes for radio and television, and has curated exhibitions of work by women painters of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She is a contributor to the Dictionary of Women Artists and a frequent lecturer in Britain, North America and Japan.