The directory «Plots»

Thomas Edward Eastaway Philip
(1878—1917)

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh poet and journalist. An accomplished writer, Thomas only turned to poetry in his later life after encouragement from the poet Robert Frost.

Following the outbreak of World War I Thomas enlisted in the army in 1915, and he is considered one of the war poets, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. He was killed in action during the Battle of Arras (1917), soon after he arrived in France.

Thomas was born in Lambeth, London. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School, St Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford. His family was of Welsh extraction. Unusually he married while still an undergraduate and determined to live his life by the pen. He was already a seasoned writer before the outbreak of war having worked as literary critic at the Daily Chronicle in London. It was while with the Daily Chronicle that he became a close friend of Welsh tramp poet W. H. Davies whose career he almost single-handedly developed. From 1905 Thomas lived, with his wife Helen and their family, at Elses Farm near Sevenoaks, Kent. Thomas rented a tiny nearby cottage for Davies and nutured his writing as best he could. On one occasion Thomas even had to arrange for the manufacture, by a local wheelwright, of a makeshift wooden leg for Davies.

Thomas was to become a full time poet only with the encouragement of his close friend Robert Frost. Living at Steep, in Hampshire, he initially published some poetry under the name Edward Eastaway. He also wrote a novel and some works of non-fiction.

The railway station at Adelstrop was immortalised by Thomas when his train made an unscheduled stop there shortly before the First World War.

Thomas enlisted in the Artists' Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting. He was promoted Corporal and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was killed in action at Arras on 9 April 1917, soon after he arrived in France.

Close friend W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and wrote the moving poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" as a commemoration.

Thomas is buried in Agny Military Cemetery, France (Row C, Grave 43). He is also commemorated in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, London and by memorial windows in the churches at Steep and Eastbury, Berkshire.

Thomas was survived by his wife, Helen, his son Merfyn and his two daughters Bronwen and Myfanwy.

After the war, Helen wrote about her courtship and early married life with Edward in the autobiography, As it Was (1926); later she added a second volume, World Without End (1931). Their daughter, Myfanwy, claims the books were written by her mother as a form of therapy to help lift her out of a deep depression that she succumbed to following the death of Edward. Under Storm's Wing was published in 1997 and is a collection of writings including the two earlier autobiographies along with various other writings and letters.

Thomas's poems are noted for their attention to the English countryside. Edward Thomas's Collected Poems was one of Andrew Motion's ten picks for the poetry section of the "Guardian Essential Library" in October 2002.

In his 2002 novel Youth, J.M. Coetzee has his main character, intrigued by the survival of pre-modernist forms in British poetry, ask himself: "What happened to the ambitions of poets here in Britain? Have they not digested the news that Edward Thomas and his world are gone for ever?" In contrast, Irish critic Edna Longley writes that Thomas's "Lob", a 150-line poem, "strangely preempts The Waste Land" through verses like: "This is tall Tom that bore / The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall / Once talked".

On November 11th, 1985, Thomas was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

St. Helena Island, 2008, Edward Thomas