Product Description

'Perhaps the best way to think of The South Country is as a dream-map...a chart of longing and loss projected onto actual terrain.' Robert Macfarlane

Acutely sensitive to rhythms of the countryside, Edward Thomas's lyrical, passionate, and sometimes political writing merges natural history with folk culture, and gives us a free-form record of the feelings and observations of one of the great poets of the English language.

Introduced by Robert Macfarlane, this centenary edition also includes a preface by Edward Thomas's wife, Helen, and the stunning engravings of Eric Fitch Daglish.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129648 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-08
• Number of items: 15
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

Oh, for 1/2 Stars!
The account of The South Country published by Edward Thomas in 1909 is a difficult book to categorize. At times startlingly lucid and clear and at others seemingly impenetrable, this book can be a real challenge at times.

Set largely within the chalk country of southern England, this is an account of a seemingly unconnected series of journeys within Hampshire, Wiltshire, Sussex and a number of other southern counties. While the writing is initially highly evocative of a space, it seems to shy away from actually identifying with a given place - place names are few and far between for much of this book. While I am no expert on the landscape of the Downs, it seemed to me that the author sometimes struggled to find clear differences at a landscape level and had to burrow down to a much finer level of reference. It seemed to me that this approach did not always work, especially when it was almost impossible to place the detailed descriptions within an area wider than a county. Here we could see the trees, often the moss on the trees, but the wood itself seemed more obscure.

The author clearly loves colour, but at times he does seem to "over egg the pudding" here, with paragraphs littered with reds, blues, yellows, greys etc. This really did feel like purple prose.

And then he goes to Cornwall. It's as if freed from the constraints of his familiar and much loved down-lands he is able to connect more openly with the places he is writing about. In the end I wished he had travelled more widely in this book, for this section of the book seems to stand above the rest. I can only wonder what he would have made of the Lake District or Scotland.

It is clear that Thomas was a fine observer of the natural world, but at times he does seem to blanket his observation is a web of detail so fine that you can no longer see the whole landscape, and lacking that, the fine detail makes little sense.

If ever there was a need for ½ stars this is it. Four stars seem generous for a book that can be difficult to penetrate, but 3 stars feels over critical. However, I was glad rather than disappointed when I completed the book, so 3 it is.

south country
An unusual and interesting book for those who only know Edward Thomas from his poetry. I found it a good companion for Adrian Bell's Men and the Fields although the two are completely different.Both are worth a place on the 'rural' shelves of any private library.