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In The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Edward Thomas is introduced, together with Brooke, Sassoon, Gurney, Rosenberg and Owen, as one of the most talented poets to emerge from the First World War period. He himself, however, didn’t like to be called a war poet, but preferred that his writing should be estimated without reference to his military service. From his childhood he developed a passion for nature and relished outdoor pursuits, especially long walks in the country. His delight in nature and intensive observation of it has helped to produce lyric poems of rare imaginative power using what he sees in nature as a stimulus to personal reflection in the same way as in the Romantic meditative poems. But, because almost all of his poetry was written in the battlefield after the outbreak of war, it is all, in an important sense, war poetry. Even when he wrote poems which avoid all overt reference to war, behind every line of each poem, whether mentioned or not, lies imminent danger and disruption. Moreover, as part of the “Georgian” poetry, his poetry also represented an attempt to wall in the idyllic garden of English poetry against the impact of modernity. Independently and simultaneously with the Georgians, he sought to produce a poetry which would respond to the immediate threat and challenges of war and modernization while never abandoning the source of his inspiration in the natural world, constantly negotiating between these two opposing demands.