{"id":33,"date":"2018-07-08T16:30:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T15:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/?page_id=33"},"modified":"2023-04-05T17:39:08","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T16:39:08","slug":"edward-thomas","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/edward-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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(photo: Edward Thomas Fellowship<\/a>)<\/h6>\r\n

Edward Thomas was the subject of my MPhil and DPhil theses at Oxford University.\u00a0 I have been working on Thomas’s prose and poetry ever since. \u00a0He was the subject of my Chatterton Lecture for the British Academy<\/a>. \u00a0I am currently editing The Icknield Way<\/em>\u00a0and In Pursuit of Spring<\/em> for Oxford University Press.<\/p>\r\n

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‘Oxford University Press are currently issuing Thomas\u2019s selected prose in six vast and superbly edited volumes. His writing continues to preoccupy literary critics and English students, but is also of increasing interest to cultural and human geographers, anthropologists, historians, conservationists and environmentalists.’ (Robert Macfarlane, Literary Review<\/em>, 2012)<\/p>\r\n

See Edward Thomas’s Prose<\/a><\/p>\r\n

See Chatterton Lecture<\/a><\/p>\r\n

See The Simple Life<\/a><\/p>\r\n

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The Wasp Trap<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

This moonlight makes\u00a0
The lovely lovelier\u00a0
Than ever before lakes\u00a0
And meadows were.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

And yet they are not,\u00a0
Though this their hour is, more\u00a0
Lovely than things that were not\u00a0
Lovely before.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Nothing on earth,\u00a0
And in the heavens no star,\u00a0
For pure brightness is worth\u00a0
More than that jar,\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

For wasps meant, now\u00a0
A star – long may it swing\u00a0
From the dead apple-bough,\u00a0
So glistening.<\/p>\r\n

– Edward Thomas (1878-1917)<\/p>\r\n

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‘There was nobody in the fields. The hay-waggon stood by the rick where it had arrived too late to be unloaded last night. To one bred in a town this kind of silence and solitariness perhaps always remains impressive. We see no man, no smoke, and hear no voice of man or beast or machinery, and straightway the mind recalls very early mornings when London has lain silent but for the cooing of pigeons. That silence of so many things that can and will make sounds gives some of its prestige to the country silence of very quiet things. Therefore when I have looked out of a strange window for the first time and seen nothing move but leaves on the earth and clouds in the sky, I have often for a moment felt as if it were dawn and have slipped into a mood of dawn; it might be possible on a cloudy day and in a new country to be deceived thus even at noon. Thus the innocence of silent London is transferred to the downs, the woods, the vacant fields, and the road without a wheel or a foot upon it for miles and miles.’ \u00a0(The Icknield Way<\/em>)<\/p>\r\n

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