Edward Thomas 1878-1917
Edward Thomas was born in London of Welsh parents and was educated at St. Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford.
He started out as a writer of biographies and prose works about country life and the natural world including The Woodland Life (1897), The Heart of England (1906), The South Country (1909), and The Pursuit of Spring (1914), which capture the peace and beauty of the English countryside in the "golden age" before the First World War. His biographies include George Herbert, Christopher Marlowe, and Swinburne.
Thomas was encouraged to write poetry by Robert Frost whom he met through a circle of friends which included W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare and Joseph Conrad. All his poetry was written in the last three years of his life, which ended when he was killed in Flanders in 1917 as a member of the Artists' Rifles.
His most memorable poems are Old Man, Adlestrop, The Owl, and This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong. His widow published two memoirs several years after his death.