When he was killed in action, Edward Tomas was mourned as an essayist, biographer and one of the foremost critics of his time, but his reputation as a poet had not yet been established. The discovery of his talent for poetry, sparked off by his meeting with the American poet Robert Frost on the eve of the First World War, was a turning point in his life. After sixteen years of frustration and self-doubt as a writer of prose, he had found a new and more confident voice, and the outbreak of war brought release from the demand for reviews and commissioned work so that he was free to write as he felt moved. A fine biographical essay by Elaine Wilson introduces the 80 poems chosen to reflect the poet's deep love of England and his affinity with nature. The beauty of the words have been enhanced by the fine calligraphy and sensitive pencil drawings of Frederick Marns. The endpapers reproduce the memorial windows at Steep and Eastbury, engraved by Laurence Whistler, dedicated to Edward and Helen Thomas.

The poems have been chosen to illuminate the personality of the poet. This is a book to be treasured. -- Books and Bookmen

Must be one of the most attractive presentations of Hardy's best-loved poems that has ever been. -- This England

Must be one of the most attractive presentations of Hardy's best-loved poems that has ever been. This England

The poems have been chosen to illuminate the personality of the poet. This is a book to be treasured. Books and Bookmen

Elaine Wilson, born and educated in Switzerland, first compiled an anthology about Harrow on the Hill, As I Trace Thy Winding Hill ('What an enchanting book.' Sir Arthur Bryant), and then followed with Thomas Hardy: An Autobiography in Verse, and Images of Christmas Frederick Marns was the calligrapher for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre edition of The Sonnets ('A beautiful and covetable book.' The Times) and the illustrator of an editin of The Natural History of Selbourne with ten drawings ('...which Durer would not be ashamed to acknowledge.' Sunday Times) In Thomas Hardy: An Autobiography in Verse, his calligraphy and pencil drawings were brought together for the first time. When Edward Thomas was killed in the battle of Arras in 1917, he was mourned as an essayist, as a biographer and as one of the foremost critics of his time. His talent for poetry, however, was known only to close friends and of the hundred and forty-four poems he had written during the last two and a half years of his life, he was to see only a dozen in print.