Edward Thomas

Born in London in 1878, Edward Thomas first made his living through criticism, reviews, and nature writing rather than poetry. He wrote widely about landscape, travel, and rural life, developing the close eye for place and weather that would later shape his verse.

He began writing poems only in the last years of his life, encouraged in part by his friendship with the American poet Robert Frost. In that short period he produced many of the works for which he is now remembered, including poems that mix quiet observation with uncertainty, longing, and a deep feeling for the natural world.

Thomas enlisted during the First World War and was killed in France in 1917. Because his poetic career was so brief, his work often feels especially concentrated and immediate, and he is now regarded as one of the defining English poets of the early twentieth century.