Now All Roads Lead to France

Starred review from August 15, 2012
A perceptive biography that traces an author's trajectory from disillusioned prose scribe to acclaimed poet. American readers may be forgiven for not knowing the work of Edward Thomas (1878-1917). While lauded as one of England's best 20th-century poets, his work has been overshadowed in the United States by that of his fellow World War I-era bards Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Yet Thomas's life was just as dramatic and his poetry equally haunting, especially considering that he only began composing poems in the last three years of his life. A man tormented by depression, ill-suited to his marriage, aloof toward his children, and disgusted by the hack work that he had to churn out in order to earn a living, Thomas underwent a radical transformation when he met Robert Frost in 1913. Frost had moved to England in hopes of finding the success that was still eluding him back home, and he quickly fell in with Thomas' literary circle. The two men immediately hit it off, sharing a keen understanding of the importance of cadence and rhythm to creating the mood of a poem. With Frost's encouragement, Thomas began drafting poems that reflected his keen appreciation of nature as well as his thoughts on romantic love, rural landscapes and, increasingly, the war. By the time of his death, he had left behind a significant oeuvre, but the only poems published in his lifetime were written under a pseudonym. Poet Hollis (Ground Water, 2004), who edited a volume of Thomas' selected poetry, expertly recreates the upheaval of English society as it made the transition from genteel post-Victorianism to brash modernism. Thomas stood poised on the dividing line between W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot and justly remains a towering figure in English poetry. This diligently researched and masterfully written exposition will appeal to Anglophiles and fans of literary biography.

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Starred review from September 15, 2012
This exquisite, sad book's British subtitle, The Last Years of Edward Thomas, is more exact than the American one. Especially since Thomas' last years included the most important literary friendship in Anglophone modernist poetry, that of Thomas and Robert Frost. Both men seethed with impatience, Frost to publish a first collectionU.S. publishers wouldn't oblige, and he'd come to England to see whether their British confreres wouldand Thomas to write literature rather than the journalism and contract books he pumped out to support his family. Both achieved their goals. Frost's A Boy's Will and North of Boston each first saw the light in England, promoted by Thomas, among others; and Thomas began writing poems with exceptional fluency when work dried up with the outbreak of WWI. Initially ambivalent about the war, Thomas eventually enlisted; the salary offset some of his lost income, and he discovered the profound patriotism that quietly informs his verselyrical nature poetry as psychologically charged as the dramatic scenes and dialogues of his American friend. Frost returned to New England and, at last, a great career, corresponding with Thomas until a shell killed him at the front. Thomas had completed 141 poems, most of which Hollis discusses as he compellingly reveals the troubled personality of Britain's first great modernist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)