Showing 29 results

Eleven letters, October 1914, from Edward Thomas to his wife, Helen Thomas, in the form of a journal of his bicycle tour in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Glamorgan and Breconshire, together with an account of his visit to Robert Frost at Dymock, Gloucestershire.

Some sixty-five letters, 1916-1917, from Edward Thomas to his wife, Helen Thomas, giving accounts of his training as an army officer, his departure to France, and experiences at the front until his death.

Notebook, 1914-1915, containing autograph drafts and revisions of some twenty-five untitled poems by Edward Thomas (ff. 1v-27), all published in The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. by R. George Thomas (Oxford, 1978), where the manuscript is designated M1 (p. xxii).

Notebook, 1916, containing autograph drafts and revisions of twenty-seven untitled poems (ff. 7v-41), all published in The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. by R. George Thomas (Oxford, 1978), where the manuscript is designated M2 (p. xxiii) and assumed to have been 'used as a working notebook in camp - and in the train. Like M1 [NLW MS 22920A], it gives an admirable example of Thomas's working method as a poet and, according to his letters to Frost, it contains many of the poems he adjudged to be his best'. Also included are the final words of the essay, 'The Pilgrim' (f. 1) (see note below), an apparently unpublished prose dialogue between P., T. and Jehovah (ff. 1 verso-7) and trigonometrical sketches (ff. 29 verso-30 verso).

Typescript drafts, [1915x1917], of twenty-three poems by Edward Thomas with collation of texts by R. George Thomas (ff. i-vi). They include two copies of ['Words'], one marked 'unamended' (ff. 34-7), and of 'Lob', one marked 'unrevised' (ff. 38-45), and a copy of 'The Combe' (f. 2) signed 'Edward Eastaway'. The typescripts are working copies used by the poet for revision when selecting poems for inclusion in Poems published in 1917 under the pseudonym 'Edward Eastaway'. Nine of the poems were included in that volume.

First World War diary of the poet and essayist Edward Thomas, 1 January-8 April 1917, containing descriptions of army life in England and France, observations on the natural world, and brief accounts of letters sent and received. It also contains the only known draft of Thomas's last poem, 'The sorrow of true love' (f. 29), dated 13 January 1917. The covers and leaves of the diary are heavily creased, suggesting that it may have been in Thomas's pocket when he was killed by a shell on the first day of the Battle of Arras on 9 April 1917. For an edited version of the diary's text, see The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. by R. George Thomas (Oxford, 1978), pp. 460-481. Three items found loose inside the diary's covers, including a draft of Thomas's poem, 'The Lane' [1916], have been filed as NLW MS 24030iiA.