Edward Thomas: Prose Writings: A Selected Edition
Volume V: Critical Studies: Swinburne and Pater
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:27th Apr '17
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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...
[A] finely-crafted book ... I remember writing that review in 2011 after reading the first volume of this superbly presented series, Autobiographies, and commenting upon one of the central themes haunting the work of Edward Thomas: the inability to ever go back; the inaccessibility of a past which haunts and beckons whilst always being one step away from actualization. This new volume complements the two earlier publications and I wait with considerable anticipation for the next volume to appear. * Ian Brinton, Tears in the Fence *
ISBN: 9780198738633
Dimensions: 241mm x 163mm x 32mm
Weight: 818g
462 pages