EDWARD THOMAS: The Last Four Years (Book One of The Memoirs of Eleanor Farjeon) by Eleanor Farjeon - 1958

London: Oxford University Press, 1958. AW2 - A first edition (same date) hardcover book in very good condition in fair dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has couple of less than 1.5" tears with wrinkling and chipping on the front top, wrinkling, chipping, crease, and some small tears on the edges and cornes, some scattered light scratches, rubbing, and stains, tanning and light shelf wear. Book lightly bowed, some bumped cornes, wrinkling on the spine edges, some scattered chipping and scuffing on the cover, some info written in ink on the top left corner of the front fixed endpaper, previous owner's info written in pencil on the front free endpaper, previous bookstore's label adhered on the front fixed endpaper, wrinkled on the top corners opposite the spine of some inside pages, light tanning and shelf wear. 8.75"x5.5", 271 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Edward Thomas's letters to Eleanor Farjeon, here printed in full, form a running record of his last four years. This letter sequence, in the words of the Foreword: 'has much more than a reference value; to lovers of his work it will help to reveal something more of one of the least self-revealing of men: a man whose "central evil" was self-consciousness, "carried as far beyond selfishness as selfishness is beyond self-denial". He could write this of himself in 1913, only two years before the torturing self-consciousness was transformed into the poet's self-expression. Edward Thomas dictates the shape of this book, which opens at his first meeting with Elanor Farjeon in the late autumn of 1912 and ends with his last letter from France in April 1917. But it is a double memoir, for the continuity of the letters enables Eleanor Farjeon to follow closely the course of those years in her life, to describe the things done and friends made, Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence, Herbert Farjeon, Clifford Bax, Lascelles Abercrombie and many others taking their parts in this first volume of her memoirs.. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Fair. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.