Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was perhaps the most accomplished of the English poets who died in the 1914-18 war; and much of his poetry was written in the three years leading up to his death. He
saw himself as an `isolated, self-considering brain', seeking to `re-open the connection' between himself and the world.
The Imagination of Edward Thomas shows this re-connection taking place in his poetry and to some extent in his imaginative prose. The world of his poetry is polarized between solitude and
relationship. There is the solitary melancholic immured in the prison of his `self-consciousness', whose awareness of lost connections in his personal life extended to a general sense of loss:
on the one hand, a sense of England as a spent force living in the aftermath of its strength; on the other hand, a sensitivity to the transience of all things and a larger awareness of the
dark, insentient world outside the circle of light created by human consciousness, a world of `regrets and wishes' and delight. But there is also the struggle to escape the limitations of his
personality and make connections with the world of others and the natural world, from both of which he derives his values.
Following the chapter on the prose, six chapters are given to a full exploration of this imaginative world - the concerns, attitudes and values that constitute his mental and moral outlook -
and three to a close study of poetic craftsmanship: language and movement, structural and semantic tensions, metaphor and symbol.
Professor Kirkham has produced a thorough and fascinating study of Thomas's art and imagination, relating them to the preoccupations of the troubled era in which he wrote, lived and died.
The cover shows Edward Thomas near his hill-top study at Wick Green, after in Pursuit of Spring, 1914. The photograph, which recently appeared in R. George Thomas's Edward Thomas: A Portrait
(Oxford University Press, 1985), is reproduced here by kind permission of Myfanwy Thomas and R. George Thomas. The cover design is by Giolitto, Wrigley & Couch.
