Selected letters

the long version

Edward Thomas, professional author, essayist, and critic, was thirty-nine when he was killed in the Arras offensive on Easter Day, 1917. Six months later his first collection of poems was published and his literary reputation secured. These Selected Letters present a uniquely vivid portrait of Thomas's life, from his time as an undergraduate at Oxford through to his final days at the Front. Chosen from more than 2,000 extant letters from Thomas to his family and literary friends - including Robert Frost, Walter de la Mare, and Eleanor Farjeon - the selection traces his struggle to establish himself as a writer, his long and successful fight against depression, and, amid the strain of marriage which sometimes brought much agony, the strength of his love for his wife Helen. The letters, which formed a key source for R. George Thomas's highly praised biography of the poet, help substantiate the editor's belief that despite Thomas's immense prose output and the late flowering of his verse in 1914-1916, the name and nature of poetry was Edward Thomas's dominant lifelong concern.