Thomas, Edward (1878-1917), was a British poet. His poems are sensitive, subjective, and often sad, and they reveal his passion for nature and the countryside. Thomas’s verse has sometimes been associated with a group of nature poets called the Georgians, but critics consider his work deeper and more original than the typical poems of the Georgians.
Philip Edward Thomas was born on March 3, 1878, in London, of Welsh parents. He graduated from Oxford University in 1900. He spent much of his short career as an essayist and journalist writing nature studies and critical works on English writers of the 1800’s, such as Walter Pater and Algernon Charles Swinburne.
In 1913, Thomas met the American poet Robert Frost. They became friends, and Frost encouraged him to write poetry. Thomas enlisted in the British Army in 1915 and was killed in action on April 9, 1917, at Arras, in France, during World War I (1914-1918). Thomas wrote much of his best verse in the two years before his death. One collection was published under the pen name of Edward Eastaway in 1917, shortly before he died. Most of his poetry was published after his death. His Collected Poems was published in 1920. Thomas also wrote a novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (1913), and several books about the English countryside, including The Woodland Life (1897) and Light and Twilight (1911).
