Author | Matthew Hollis |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Subject | Edward Thomas |
Publisher | Faber & Faber (UK) W. W. Norton Company (US) |
Now All Roads Lead To France is a 2011 non-fiction book by Matthew Hollis. It details the life of Edward Thomas, a seminal poet in the history of British literature known for his work exploring the notions of disconnection and unsettledness. Reviews praising the book ran in publications such as The Guardian , [1] The Independent , [2] and The Wall Street Journal . [3] The book won the 2011 Costa Book Award for 'Best Biography', with the judges calling it "brilliant", [4] as well as the 2011 H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize. [5]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2012) |
Hollis gives a detailed picture of Thomas' life and the poet's inner struggles. Thomas, Hollis writes, suffered through chronic depression, with Thomas stating that he felt "plagued with work, burning my candle at 3 ends" with frequent thoughts of suicide and vicious verbal sparring with his wife Helen. Walking through the English countrysides offered Thomas some relief. Still, it took Thomas' meeting with Robert Frost, an immigrant from the U.S. seeking to break into English literary circles, in 1913 to change his life's path. [1]
Frost's relationship to Thomas, as Hollis discusses, essentially saved Thomas' life. Their friendship serves as the heart of the book. Hollis details how the two poets spent hours "talks-walking", in Frost's words, around the bucolic areas of Gloucestershire to think. Thomas wrote in September 1914, "I am slowly growing into a conscious Englishman." [1]
In a short space of about two years, Thomas published as much as other poets took a lifetime to write. His work, Hollis recounts, conveyed his deep sense of wandering insecurity and lack of connection, particularly using his emotional reflections based on nature. Hollis describes how the advent of World War I, the horrors of which Thomas knew well, brought out a profound purpose in Thomas' mind. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British army, Thomas sought out action in 1917, and he died from the shock-wave of a passing shell just about ten weeks after arriving on the Western Front. [1]
Supportive reviews ran in a variety of publications. Travel writer Robert Macfarlane summed up the book for The Guardian by writing, "An impressive new view of Edward Thomas helps us to understand how much more there is to the poet than willow-herb and meadowsweet". He also commented that Hollis' "narrative is calm and discreet, his tone witty and scholarly", and "he is unsentimentally candid about his subject's troubles and solipsism." [1] The Independent published praise from writer Sean O'Brian; Brian remarked, "In this extremely readable critical-biographical study, place and landscape have an importance equal to poetry." [2]
Author and journalist Allan Massie wrote a positive review in The Wall Street Journal . He stated about Thomas that once he "took to poetry at age 36, it was as if the ice on a winter river had melted and the water could flow freely." Massie concluded about the book,
"Hollis gives as full an account of Thomas's life as may be possible. He treats his family difficulties sympathetically, recounts, without innuendo or prurience, loving relationships with two other women besides his wife, notes Thomas's difficulties with his father and his inability to understand his own son. Yet this book is essentially a study of the making of a poet, and Mr. Hollis's chief interest is in the poems themselves. It is a very intelligent and sympathetic study." [3]
The book won the 2011 Costa Book Award for 'Best Biography'. The judges commented: "Dramatic and engrossing. A brilliant biography that moved us all." [4] It also won the 2011 H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize. [5]
The 2011 Costa awards were subject to some attention from bookmakers. They offered odds of 2/1 for favourite Now All Roads Lead To France to win as overall 'Book of the Year' and odds of 3/1 for novelist Andrew Miller's Pure . [6] Pure narrowly won out, the judging panel having been locked in a "fierce debate and quite bitter dissent" and eventually using a vote to decide on the winner. [7] [8]
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Philip Edward Thomas was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1999.
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Hall was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard, and Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft.
"The Road Not Taken" is a narrative poem by Robert Frost, first published in the August 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and later published as the first poem in the collection Mountain Interval of 1916. Its central theme is the divergence of paths, both literally and figuratively, although its interpretation is noted for being complex and potentially divergent.
Jo Shapcott FRSL is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.
Anna "Nan" Shepherd was a Scottish Modernist writer and poet, best known for her seminal mountain memoir, The Living Mountain, based on experiences of hill walking in the Cairngorms. This is noted as an influence by nature writers who include Robert Macfarlane and Richard Mabey. She also wrote poetry and three novels set in small fictional communities in Northern Scotland. The landscape and weather of this area played a major role in her novels and provided a focus for her poetry. Shepherd served as a lecturer in English at the Aberdeen College of Education for most of her working life.
Jay Parini is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, and Herman Melville.
John Burnside FRSL FRSE is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book.
Robin Robertson is a Scottish poet.
Paul Farley, FRSL is a British poet, writer and broadcaster.
Daljit Nagra is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! – a title alluding to W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!, D. H. Lawrence's Look! We Have Come Through! and by epigraph also to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" – was published by Faber in February 2007. Nagra's poems relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK, and often employ language that imitates the English spoken by Indian immigrants whose first language is Punjabi, which some have termed "Punglish". He currently works part-time at JFS School in Kenton and visits schools, universities and festivals where he performs his work. He was appointed chair of the Royal Society of Literature in November 2020.
Lavinia Elaine Greenlaw is an English poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. She won the Prix du Premier Roman with her first novel and her poetry has been shortlisted for awards that include the T. S. Eliot Prize, Forward Prize and Whitbread Poetry Prize. Her 2014 Costa Poetry Award was for A Double Sorrow: A Version of Troilus and Criseyde. Greenlaw currently holds the post of Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Caroline Bird is a British poet, playwright and author.
Pure is a 2011 novel by English author Andrew Miller. The book is the sixth novel by Miller and was released on 9 June 2011 in the United Kingdom through Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton. The novel is set in pre-revolutionary France and the upcoming turmoil is a consistent theme throughout. It follows an engineer named Jean-Baptiste Baratte and chronicles his efforts in clearing an overfilled graveyard which is polluting the surrounding area. Baratte makes friends and enemies as the cemetery is both loved and hated by the people of the district.
Kae Tempest is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright.
Matthew Hollis is an English author, editor, professor, and poet, currently living in London, England.
"Adlestrop" is a poem by Edward Thomas. It is based on a railway journey Thomas took on 24 June 1914, during which his train briefly stopped at the now-closed station in the Gloucestershire village of Adlestrop.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.