(Image: Edward Thomas Fellowship)
Edward Thomas was the subject of my MPhil and DPhil theses at Oxford University. I have been working on Thomas’s prose and poetry ever since. I am currently working on The Icknield Way and In Pursuit of Spring for Oxford University Press.
My edition of Thomas’s Autobiographies was one of the ‘Books of the Year’ for 2011 in The Times Literary Supplement (‘Guy Cuthbertson’s splendidly edited Autobiographies promises well for the series’), and, in English Literature in Transition, Michel Pharand commented that ‘Guy Cuthbertson’s editorial apparatus cannot be faulted […] If Autobiographies is any indication, the other volumes are likely to become indispensable resources for the rediscovery of a large and neglected part of Edward Thomas’s oeuvre’. Both this volume and England and Wales were praised in a long review in The Times Literary Supplement, and in The Observer Robert Macfarlane chose England and Wales as his summer reading. In The Literary Review, Macfarlane described the volumes as ‘superbly edited’.
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Edward Thomas, England and Wales, ed. Guy Cuthbertson and Lucy Newlyn (Oxford University Press, 2011). Edward Thomas: Prose Writings: A Selected Edition. Volume II.
– praised in a long review in the TLS by Paul Jarman, January 2012. The introduction, written with Lucy Newlyn, is ‘excellent’. ‘Prefaced with a biographical, contextual and thought-provoking critical introduction, and packed with footnotes which not only elucidate the text but also – and this is particularly strong – cross-refer the reader to related material elsewhere in Thomas’s poetry and prose, these volumes must plug some conspicuous gaps in university library holdings, and present Thomas scholars with the tools for a broader re-evaluation of his life’s work.’
– The Year’s Work in English Studies (2013) recorded that ‘The year 2011 saw the publication of Cuthbertson, ed., Edward Thomas: Prose Writings, volume 1: Autobiographies and Cuthbertson and Newlyn, eds., Edward Thomas: Prose Writings, volume 2: England and Wales. These are handsomely produced and assiduously researched editions, and this reviewer was struck by the extraordinarily eclectic prose output of a writer who died at the age of only 39. As the editors acknowledge, while Thomas’s poetry has received subtle and extensive critical scrutiny, his narrative prose fiction, middlebrow journalism, and life-writing are only just receiving the acute analysis they deserve.’
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Edward Thomas, Autobiographies, ed. Guy Cuthbertson (Oxford University Press, 2011). Edward Thomas: Prose Writings: A Selected Edition. Volume I.
– ‘Guy Cuthbertson’s splendidly edited Autobiographies promises well for the series’ – Peter McDonald, ‘Books of the Year’, TLS, December 2011
– ‘Useful and fascinating’; with an ‘excellent introduction’ – Paul Jarman, TLS, January 2012
– this book was also the subject of the
TLS blog.
– ‘When I reviewed the first volume of O.U.P.’s ambitious project to produce six substantial volumes of the prose of Edward Thomas I remember being struck by the meticulous and engaging introduction by the editor Guy Cuthbertson. That review appeared in The English Association’s Journal
The Use of English in the autumn of 2011. The same held true for the second volume edited by both Cuthbertson and his partner in the whole project, Lucy Newlyn.’ – Ian Brinton,
Tears in the Fence, May 2017.– ‘invaluable […] the main achievement here is that we come away from this first volume with a deeper appreciation for Thomas the prose writer […] Cuthbertson’s volume is an act of recovery […] careful and admirable’ – David Farley, Britain and the World, 7:1 (March 2014).
– ‘Cuthbertson has traced and annotated [the echoes and allusions] scrupulously, revealing for the first time the rich backdrop of Thomas’s extensive readings and showing how they inform his fictional and nonfictional works. […] Guy Cuthbertson’s editorial apparatus cannot be faulted. […] If Autobiographies is any indication, the other volumes are likely to become indispensable resources for the rediscovery of a large and neglected part of Edward Thomas’s important oeuvre.’ – Michel W. Pharand, English Literature in Transition, 2012
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Guy Cuthbertson and Lucy Newlyn, eds, Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry (London: Enitharmon, 2007).
– Branch-Lines was praised in a long review by Adam Newey in The
Guardian:
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Recent talks on Thomas include ‘Edward Thomas’s England’ at Rewley House, University of Oxford, and ‘”Work, Not Words”: Edward Thomas and the War Against Writing’ at the Cardiff Edward Thomas Centenary Conference.
From the Oxford Spring School, a
podcast is available.