Edward Thomas letters and poems

Papers, [1903]-[1922], of Jack Haines relating to Edward Thomas, comprising: an apparently unpublished holograph book review by Thomas, [?early 1903], entitled 'Pioneers! O Pioneers', reviewing Gerald Stanley Lee, The Lost Art of Reading (New York and London, 1902) (ff. 1-4); a carbon copy typescript of 'The West Wind', being an abbreviated, and otherwise unknown, version of 'The Wind's Song', consisting of the last ten lines only of that poem ('The Wind's Song', composed in April 1916, is No. 110 in The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. by R. George Thomas (Oxford, 1978), pp. 300-301) (f. 5); a carbon copy typescript of the poem 'Lights Out', written in early November 1916, first published in Edward Thomas ("Edward Eastaway"), Poems (London, 1917), pp. 59-60, and No. 139 in The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, pp. 366-7 (f. 6); a typescript copy of the poem 'Out in the dark', written on Christmas Eve 1916, first published in Edward Thomas, Last Poems (London, 1918), p. 96, and No. 143 in The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, pp. 374-5 (f. 7); a manuscript copy, undated and in an unidentified hand, of the poem beginning 'I may come near loving you', first published as 'P.H.T.' in Edward Thomas, Collected Poems (Fifth Impression) (London, 1949) and No. 99 in The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, pp. 272-3 (f. 8); a letter, [28] June 1915, from Edward Thomas, at Bablake School, Coventry, to Haines, sending a [?typescript] draft of his poem 'Words' (the poem is not named in the letter and is no longer present; Thomas also sent a revised version to Haines on 30 June 1915, see NLW, R. George Thomas (Edward Thomas) Research Papers /1) (f. 9); a letter card, 10 September 1915, from E[dward] T[homas], Balham, to Haines (f. 10); and a letter, [1922], from Helen Thomas, Otford, Sevenoaks, to Haines, discussing her marriage to Edward Thomas and his friendship with Robert Frost, and sending Haines the manuscript now NLW MS 24122B (f. 11-12).

Arranged at NLW as follows: prose and poetry; letters.

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Title based on contents.

Digital version available: http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4919550 (viewed March 2019)

Small tears to ff. 6, 7 and 9 repaired at NLW (November 2018).

The typescripts of 'Lights out' and 'Out in the dark' were apparently sent to Haines by Thomas in a letter written on [?Christmas Day] 1916 (see Robert P. Eckert, Edward Thomas: A Biography and a Bibliography (London, 1937), pp. 172-3).

For a further 38 letters from Thomas to Haines, 1914-1917, see Gloucester, Gloucestershire Archives, D10828/1/1/87-88.
For typescript copies of 33 letters from Thomas to Haines, including the two included here (ff. 9-10), see NLW, R. George Thomas (Edward Thomas) Research Papers /1 (with a typescript of one further letter in /4); these are duplicates of typescripts in Cardiff, Cardiff University 424/1/2/1/15.
For an early draft and a fair copy of 'The Wind's Song' see NLW MS 22921A, ff. 16 verso-17.
For autograph fair copies of all four of the present poems see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Don d.28, ff. 25, 38, 70, 74.

Published