Audiobooks by Edward Thomas

Was It An Illusion - The Parson's Story Audiobook

Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was born on 7th June 1831 in Islington, London. She was educated at home by her mother and showed early promise as a writer, publishing her first poem at the age of 7 and her first story at 12. Thereafter several popular periodicals published her poetry, stories and articles.In addition she also illustrated some of her own writings and painted scenes from books she had read. This talent was not supported by her parents, who saw an artist's life as scandalous. Undeterred Amelia took up composing and performing music until a bout of typhus caused throat damage. Other interests soon followed until, early in the 1850s, Amelia focused exclusively on writing. Her early novels were well received, and with 'Barbara's History' in 1864, a work revolving around bigamy, her reputation was established. Amelia's pen was also the purveyor of ghost stories for magazines and are still anthologized as classic tales to this day.In January 1851, Amelia became engaged, apparently to please her parents, but she quickly broke it off. In reality her emotional attachments were almost exclusively with women. From the early 1860s she lived with Ellen Drew Braysher, a widow 27 years her senior, until both women died in early 1892. During this relationship other women also entered and left her life. Her frequent travelling companion, Lucy Renshaw, accompanied her to Egypt in the winter of 1873 and there she found a life-changing interest in Egyptology. Aware of increasing threats from tourism and modern development she became an advocate for their research and preservation. To advance the work Amelia largely abandoned much of her writing in favour of Egyptology and even took on strenuous lecture tours to raise funds.After catching influenza, Amelia Edwards, 'the Godmother of Egyptology' died on 15th April 1892 at Weston-super-Mare. She was 60. In this rural story a man is inspecting schools in the district of an old and now fabulously rich university friend. When they finally meet a dark secret is revealed to both of them.

Amelia B. Edwards, Edward Thomas (Author), Elliot Fitzpatrick (Narrator)

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The Poetry of World War I - Vol II - The Fallen Poets

War may be rationalized as 'diplomacy by other means' but the reality is that when tribes, Nations and peoples bring themselves into armed conflict with one another mayhem, terror and slaughter are the result.In the First World War, The Great War, The War to End all Wars any idealistic aims that it was a 'just cause' and would be all over in a few months were shattered against the vast scale of millions dead or wounded all for the often temporary gains of a few miles of shell-pocked mud. Human bodies were of little more value than the bullets and shells which mowed them down.In this series of poetry volumes we look at the first world war from several viewpoints. From poets who died, often in battle, during its torturous years, to the women who write of war and its consequences as well as an anthology of those poets, some still of fame, and some now forgotten with only their words to bear witness for what they have experienced. Each has an individual point of view that bears its own truth.For the poets who fought in this conflict their first hand accounts often came at a terrible and irrevocable price. In this volume we collect together the works of many poets who died during this tumultuous time. Whilst their lives were cut tragically short their words endure. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen (Author), Gideon Wagner, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of World War I - Volume I - An Anthology

In the War a great volume of poetry was written, produced and published in books, periodicals, newspapers or letters back to home. We often think of War as a necessity. We fight for a more just and better world. We often fail. But in our poets we gain a truth and a morality that shocks us, consoles us and holds our values to the light. In this volume we hear poems from the front, from home, from soldiers, from auxiliaries, from friend and from foe.War and poetry seem somehow alien to each other. How can the horror and slaughter of war become any more real and terrifying, visceral and tender in the words of poets?The Great War, World War I, the War to End All Wars, was a stain on humanity and the nations who fought in it. Millions killed or wounded for aims and principles that, for many, are difficult to accept in the modern age.The poet as a soldier has happened throughout history but not to the level of the men in this volume. Today we are used to 'embedded journalists' who report direct from the frontline. Here we have 'embedded poets' who report from the frontline in a unique and inspiring way. Their words, often raw, emotional, angry, despairing yet eloquent, moving, suffused with a hope that we are all capable of more despite the futility and carnage around them. These poets including Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, John McCrae, Edward Thomas and several others, including the German Alfred Lichtenstein, lost their lives in the years of war on which they had so eloquently and intensely written. Their lost lives adding to the toll that war makes us all less whole, less worthy of attaining what we should raise ourselves to be.

Charles Sorley, Edward Thomas, Ethel Lina White, Paul Gallico, Wilfred Owen (Author), Dorothy Mcguire, Gary Cooper, Ghizela Rowe, Gideon Wagner, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Poetry of Edward Thomas

Philip Edward Thomas was born on 3rd March, 1878 at 14 Lansdowne Gardens in Stockwell, Lambeth, which was then a part of Surrey. His family had a rich Welsh heritage.Thomas was educated at Battersea Grammar School before proceeding to St Paul's School in London and then becoming a history scholar, between 1898-1900, at Lincoln College, Oxford.Whilst still studying for his degree he married Helen Berenice Noble in June, 1899, in Fulham, London. Thomas had already decided by this time to fashion a career out of literature.As a book reviewer he reviewed in the order of fifteen books a week and began to be published as both a literary critic, for the Daily Chronicle, and as a biographer. His writing talents also extended to writing on the countryside and, in 1913, a novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans was published.Thomas is also responsible for the shepherding and mentoring of the career of maverick tramp poet W. H. Davies during the early years of the 20th Century. Despite Davies's years of wanderlust he was encouraged to take up accommodation in a small cottage near to where Thomas, Helen and his family lived at Elses Farm, near Sevenoaks in Kent.Ironically although Thomas believed that poetry was the highest form of literature and reviewed poetry books often it was only in 1914 that he began to write poetry himself. By this time, he was living at Steep, East Hampshire, and his early poems were published under the pseudonym of 'Edward Eastaway'. The American poet Robert Frost, who was living in England at the time, went to some lengths to encourage Thomas to continue writing poetry. Their friendship became so close that they planned to reside side by side in the United States. Frost's classic poem, "The Road Not Taken", was inspired by his long walks with Thomas and the latter's indecisiveness about which route to take.Thomas wrote several revered poems. For many his lines on the now abandoned railway station at Adlestrop, written after his train made a stop at the Cotswolds station on 24th June, 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War are his best.Europe was now to be engulfed in a monumental armed struggle and many writers, poets and painters heeded the call to become part of the tide of humanity to serve their countries. Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting without too much difficulty.He was promoted to corporal, and by November 1916 had been commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. Philip Edward Thomas was killed in action soon after his arrival in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917. To soften the blow to his widow Helen, a fiction was concocted of a "bloodless death"; that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave from an exploding shell as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. (It was only decades later that a letter from his commanding officer, Franklin Lushington, written in 1936, was discovered stating that Thomas had been "shot clean through the chest".)W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and his commemorative poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" is a moving tribute to the loss of his friend.Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43).As a poet Thomas's career was short but he has been grouped with the War Poets though his output of war poems is short in number, especially when set against those that feature the countryside. Aside from his poems and a novel Thomas wrote frequent essays and a number of travel books.On Armistice Day, 11th November, 1985, Thomas was among the 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription, written by fellow poet Wilfred Owen, reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."Thomas was described by British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes as "the father of us all." This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Edward Thomas (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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