Edward Thomas is a key figure in the English literary canon. A
major twentieth-century poet, he was also one of England's most
experienced and respected Edwardian and Georgian critics, and an
exceptional observer of the countryside. Although he died at the
age of only 39, his prose output was considerable and encompassed a
wide range of genres: biography, autobiography, essays, reviews,
fiction, nature books, travel writings, and anthologies. While
Thomas's stature as a poet is widely appreciated, his prose works
have yet to be given their critical due - in large part because
scholarly editions have hitherto been lacking. Edward Thomas: Prose
Writings: A Selected Edition shows that Thomas's prose deserves to
be much better known by literary scholars but also the general
reading public. This six-volume edition establishes him as one of
the most important prose writers in English, who contributed
remarkable ideas and representations of the self and community, the
landscape and ecology, literature and history, the spiritual and
artistic life. It is the definitive edition of Thomas's prose and a
significant scholarly resource for the twenty-first century. Volume
V is dedicated to Edward Thomas's work in literary criticism. Known
as a diverse and prolific reviewer of literature, including of
modern poetry, Thomas also wrote a significant number of broadly
critical studies at book length. These books helped alter his
established reputation as a nature writer, and included studies of
Lefcadio Hearn, Maurice Maeterlinck, and of Keats. Volume 5
reproduces the two most important of his works in criticism:
Thomas's Algernon Charles Swinburne: A Study (1912) and Walter
Pater: A Study (1913). These are important texts in the last few
years of Thomas's career as a prose writer, in which obliquely he
assesses his own relationship with prose and with creative
language, analysing via two other writers what were some of the
largest challenges for his authorship. Presented as an evaluation
of two major Victorian writers, the two books are best understood
as self-examination. And they are also, as the Introduction argues,
telling versions of Thomas's 'unlived lives': in assessing both
Swinburne and Pater, Thomas contemplates lives that he had not
himself led. The books are suffused with his own dismay,
self-criticism, longing, and desire. They are unmissable steps on
Thomas the poet's way to discovering that prose was not the best
literary form for his self-expression. Fully annotated, this
edition draws widely on the surviving manuscripts of these two
works to present a unique insight into Thomas at work, finding the
physical traces in the manuscript record of the very troubles he
was claiming true of two other writers. The edition also adds
further literary material, including reviews and an early Paterian
short-story by Thomas to indicate something of his debts -
sometimes despite his protestations - to authors of the previous
generation.
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