Edward Thomas wrote a lifetime's poetry in two years. Already a
dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only in
December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at Arras.
Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about the
trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and generic
range expose the limits of that category too. A central figure in modern
poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade English poetry in
the early 20th century. Edna Longley published an acclaimed edition of
Edward Thomas' "Poems" and "Last Poems" in 1973. Her work advanced
Thomas' reputation as a major modern poet. Now she has produced a
revised version, which includes all his poems and draws on freshly
available archive material. The extensive notes contain substantial
quotations from Thomas' prose, letters and notebooks, as well as a new
commentary on the poems. The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas'
poems helps us to understand their depth and complexity, together with
their contexts in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in
English poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas' criticism feeds into
his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as
'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this
edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small but
significant ways from that of other extant collections of Thomas' poems.
The Bloodaxe edition is larger (with more comprehensive notes) than
Faber's "Collected Poems" by Edward Thomas as well as a pound cheaper.
More importantly, for academic sales, the Bloodaxe text is more
authoritative than Faber's (which uses R. George Thomas' 1978 text).
Edna Longley has used manuscripts, proofs and newly available archive
material to establish a text for Edward Thomas' complete poetry which
will now be used by scholars and students in all future discussions of
his work.
