Edward Thomas: The Origins of his Poetry builds a new theoretical framework for critical work on imaginative composition through an investigation of Edward Thomas's composing processes, on material from his letters, his poems and his prose books. It looks at his relation to the land and landscape and includes detailed and illuminating new readings of his poems. It traces connections between Thomas's approach to composition and the writing and thought of Freud, Woolf and William James, and the influence of Japanese aesthetics, and draws surprising and far-reaching conclusions for the study of poetic composition.