Jeremy Mitchell, Chair of the Edward Thomas Fellowship and Keeper of the Collections, writes: The Friends have been most generous to Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery and The Edward Thomas Fellowship over the past few years as, together, they build on the 2,000 volumes collected by the late Tim Wilton-Steer that form the bulk of this publicly-accessible collection held in the Edward Thomas Study Centre at the Museum and Art Gallery.
In particular, whilst other depositories, such as the National Library of Wales and Cardiff University, hold many signed copies or manuscript items this collection historically has few such items and the Fellowship have a policy of seeking to increase interest in the collection through the addition of items like this.
Edward Thomas was a literary critic, writer and, ultimately, poet who was killed in the First World War at the beginning, literally, of the Battle of Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April, 1917. Amongst his most well-known books are The Icknield Way (1913) and In Pursuit of Spring (1914), and his poetry includes the often-requested Adlestrop (1915) and As the team’s head-brass (1916).
Edward Thomas was also a lover of nature and inspired by many of those writing about (and living in) the country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – including W H Davies, W H Hudson and Richard Jefferies – about whom Thomas’s biography is one of the best.
However, Thomas had to make a living first and write poetry last (from December 1914) and it was as a literary critic and reviewer for publications such as the Daily Chronicle (from as early as 1900) that he began to make his name as one of those from whom a favourable review was most widely sought. He was encouraged in this by H W Nevinson, indeed, it was Nevinson who first employed Thomas in this role and who subsequently refers to Thomas in all three volumes of his autobiography with a longish tribute in the first volume Changes and Chances (1923) where he describes Thomas as one of his very best reviewers as well as a close friend.
This friendship was clearly important also to Thomas and led to his first publication in 1903, when Nevinson suggested Thomas as a substitute to for himself to write ‘a book of 60,000 words on Oxford, to accompany a series of pictures by John Fulleylove, R.I.’ This earned Thomas £100 and was written within a four-month period!
The friendship endured and this copy of the Jefferies biography demonstrates Thomas’s affection for Nevinson as it bears an inscription on the front free endpaper ‘Henry W Nevinson from the Author.1909.’ It is also felt that the first part of the inscription is in Thomas’s hand. It is a worthy addition to the collection in the Study Centre, where it is publicly accessible.
Thank you again to FNL for making this acquisition possible.
