Edward Thomas was a literary critic, biographer, and travel and nature writer for decades before he turned his hand to poetry at the age of thirty-six, at the suggestion of his close friend Robert Frost .

World War I broke out shortly after this decision, and in 1915 Thomas enlisted. His first book of poetry, Six Poems , was published in 1916. In 1917, as his next collection, Poems , was being prepared for print, he was killed in action in France. What remained of his poetry was published posthumously, his career as a poet cut short after just three years.

Though his contemporaries knew him best for his literary criticism and prose, his modern reputation rests squarely on his poetry. Even though he wrote many of them during the war, only a few are overt war poems, with Thomas largely preferring to write about the English countryside. Despite his short few years of poetic output, Thomas was highly influential, with his personal voice and exploration of solitude and alienation foreshadowing the modernist movement that would emerge after the end of the war.