Edward Thomas

1878–1917

On March 3, 1878, Philip Edward Thomas was born in Lambeth, London, the eldest
of six sons of Welsh parents. As a child, Thomas spent many holidays in both Wales
and Wiltshire, where he explored the landscape of Richard Jefferies, his first literary
hero. Thomas was educated at several schools, including Battersea Grammar
School and St. Paul's School in London. His father, who worked as a civil servant,
wanted Thomas to enter the same field and urged his son to study for the civil
service examination after leaving St. Paul's in 1895. Though he acquiesced and
prepared for the exam, Thomas retained his desire to write and began publishing
essays instead of pursuing a career in the civil service.

Encouraged by critic James Ashcroft Noble, Thomas compiled and published his
first book, The Woodland Life in 1896, a collection of essays about his long walks.
Thomas began a relationship with Noble’s second daughter, Helen Berenice Noble.
They married in 1899, while she was pregnant with their son, Merfyn. Shortly after
their first child was born, Thomas won a scholarship to Lincoln College in Oxford
and later graduated with a degree in history, further diverging from the career path
his father hoped he would follow.

For many years, Thomas supported his family through a series of reviewing
positions. He succeeded Lionel Johnson as a regular reviewer for the Daily
Chronicle, reviewing contemporary poetry, reprints, criticism, and country books, but
was earning less than 2 pounds a week, forcing him to sacrifice creative writing for
more necessary work. The Thomases moved five times in a ten year span, during
which their two daughters were born, Myfanwy in 1910, and Bronwen in 1913. Most
notably, in 1906, they moved to Petersfield in Hampshire, and later to the nearby
Yew Tree Cottage in Steep, where the countryside had an immediate influence on
Thomas’s poetic landscapes.

During this time, Thomas published a number of important critical and biographical
studies, including Richard Jefferies (1909), Maurice Maeterlinck (1911), Algernon
Charles Swinburne (1912), and Walter Pater (1913). Unsatisfied by work which he felt
repressed his creativity, and under the constant stress of financial strains, Thomas
endured poor health and recurrent physical and psychological breakdowns. His
unhappiness was a great strain on his marriage, as were a few platonic friendships
with women, such as the writer, Eleanor Farjeon. However, Thomas's well-being
improved significantly following the family's move to Steep Village in 1913, where he
began writing more creative and often autobiographical work. He began work on
Childhood, and wrote The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (1913), The Icknield Way (1913),
and In Pursuit of Spring (1914).

At this same time, the poet Robert Frost and his family moved into a nearby cottage.
Frost was just at the start of his career, and the two men developed a strong
friendship, taking long walks in the countryside together and gathering with a lively
community of local writers in the evenings. Later, Frost wrote of their time together:
"I never had, I never shall have another such year of friendship." It was during this
precarious time, as World War I began, that Frost persuaded Thomas to begin
writing poetry. He wrote his first real poem in 1914, the blank-verse dialogue "Up in
the Wind," which was published, along with much of his later work, under the
pseudonym Edward Eastaway. Thomas himself helped build Frost's reputation by
writing a rave review of North of Boston in 1914.

As the literary market collapsed during the war, Thomas found more time to write
poetry. He struggled with the difficult choice between moving with his family to New
England, as Frost urged, or enlisting as a soldier. In July 1915, he joined the Artists'
Rifles and was sent in November to Hare Hall Camp in Romford, Essex. He became
a Lance Corporal and instructed his fellow officers, including the poet Wilfred Owen.
While at Hare Hall Camp for ten months, Thomas wrote over 40 poems; in just two
years, he wrote over 140 poems.

Written during wartime, while serving as a soldier, much of Thomas's work blends
and shifts between meditative recollections of his beloved countryside and his
experiences in battle. In a review in The Guardian, Ian Sansom writes: "If anything
explains the continuing appeal of his poems, it's probably that Thomas seems to
have no clear idea of what he's doing or where's he's going; the effort is all. Many of
the poems feature a first-person narrator who is tramping along, overlooked by
others, a visitor in the landscape, passing by beguiling streams and fields, often in
the rain, listening to much thrush-song and 'parleying starlings' and 'speculating
rooks', and getting absolutely nowhere. Happiness, life and love all lie just out of
reach—a leap, or a walking-stick's length away."

In September of 1916, Thomas began training as an Officer Cadet with the Royal
Garrison Artillery, and by November he was commissioned Second Lieutenant. He
volunteered for service overseas and was sent to northern France, where he was
stationed at Le Havre, Mondicourt, Dainville, and finally at Arras. On the first day of
the battle at Arras, April 9, 1917, Thomas was killed by a shell blast. He was buried
the following day in Agny military cemetery.