Edward Thomas. Judy Kendall
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Edward Thomas
Writing Wales in English
CREW series of Critical and Scholarly Studies General Editor: Professor M. Wynn Thomas (CREW, Swansea University)
This CREW series is dedicated to Emyr Humphreys, a major figure in the literary culture of modern Wales, a founding patron of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, and, along with Gillian Clarke and Seamus Heaney, one of CREW’s Honorary Associates. Grateful thanks are due to the late Richard Dynevor for making this series possible.
Other titles in the series
Stephen Knight, A Hundred Years of Fiction (978-0-7083-1846-1)
Barbara Prys-Williams, Twentieth-Century Autobiography (978-0-7083-1891-1)
Kirsti Bohata, Postcolonialism Revisited (978-0-7083-1892-8)
Chris Wigginton, Modernism from the Margins (978-0-7083-1927-7)
Linden Peach, Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction (978-0-7083-1998-7)
Sarah Prescott, Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and Britons (978-0-7083-2053-2)
Hywel Dix, After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain (978-0-7083-2153-9)
Matthew Jarvis, Welsh Environments in Contemporary Welsh Poetry (978-0-7083-2152-2)
Diane Green, Emyr Humphreys: A Postcolonial Novelist? (978-0-7083-2217-8)
Harri Garrod Roberts, Embodying Identity: Representations of the Body in Welsh Literature (978-0-7083-2169-0)
M. Wynn Thomas, In the Shadow of the Pulpit: Literature and Nonconformist Wales (978-0-7083-2225-3)
Linden Peach, The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (978-0-7083-2216-1)
Daniel Westover, R. S. Thomas: A Stylistic Biography (978-0-7083-2411-0)
Edward Thomas
The Origins of his Poetry
Writing Wales in English
JUDY KENDALL
© Judy Kendall, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without clearance from the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP. www.uwp.ac.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-70832-403-5
eISBN: 978-1-78316-485-1
The right of Judy Kendall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988
Cover image: Portrait of Edward Thomas in 1899, Heinz Archive Library, National Portrait Gallery, London; by permission of Rosemary Vellender and the Estate of Edward Thomas.
Diana Louise Kendall 1924–2008
CONTENTS
Note on the Text and Abbreviations
Introduction: Studying the Composing Process
1 Starting Points – How Poems Emerge
The aim of this series is to produce a body of scholarly and critical work that reflects the richness and variety of the English-language literature of modern Wales. Drawing upon the expertise both of established specialists and of younger scholars, it will seek to take advantage of the concepts, models and discourses current in the best contemporary studies to promote a better understanding of the literature’s significance, viewed not only as an expression of Welsh culture but also as an instance of modern literatures in English worldwide. In addition, it will seek to make available the scholarly materials (such as bibliographies) necessary for this kind of advanced, informed study.
M. Wynn Thomas
CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales) Swansea University
Thanks to Shelley Saguaro, Alan Brown and Simon Dentith for patient advice during the germination of the ideas in this book; Philip Gross for tactful, astute responses; University of Gloucestershire for practical support; University of Salford, and in particular Jocelyn Evans and Lucie Armitt, for practical support and publication funding; Lorna Scott and Caro McIntosh of University of Gloucestershire Archives; Colin Harris and the staff of Oxford University Bodleian Special Collections Reading Rooms; the Battersea Public Library Local History Department; the Hawthornden Fellowship for an extended secluded period of support; and the Kendall family for the loan of Barrow Road.
Thanks also to Martin Randall, Diana Kendall, Geoff Caplan, Edward Thomas Fellowship, Richard Emeny, Anne Harvey and Chris B. McCully for scholarly support.
I am grateful to the Edward Thomas Estate for generous permission to use unpublished and published material on Edward Thomas; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, owners of Letters to Walter de la Mare (Eng lett 376), for kind permission to use Edward Thomas’s unpublished