Man alienated from nature
THOMAS, Edward In Pursuit of Spring. Thomas Nelson and Sons. 1914.
8vo. Original blue ribbed cloth, gilt lettering to front and spine with gilt zodiacal roundel to front, in scarce dustwrapper with plate after E.W. Haslehust in panel to front, maps to endpapers, t.e.g.; pp. 301, with frontispiece and 5 plates by E.W. Haslehust tipped-in to thick grey leaves with captioned tissue guards; dustwrapper with slight nicks to extremities, a few spots to edges, cloth very bright, vey good indeed.
First edition, first issue with illustrator's name mis-spelt in list of illlustrations. This is the great nature poet's last prose work, and one of his most important. Ostensibly the gently comic story of the writer's cycle trip west from London into the countryside to find the first traces of spring, it is really an account of urban twentieth century man's alienation from the natural environment and his attempt to rediscover a sense of belonging in the world. Humanity's separation from the natural world is seen to have an existential effect on our identity; the poet is pursued across the countryside by a buffoonish doppelganger, a symbol of the divided self. This self-mocking shadow version of the poet, a familiar figure in Thomas's later poetry, disappears as he reaches the Quantocks and finds in the appearance of cowslips and bluebells 'Winter's grave' - a sign that if we embrace it nature will always reassert itself, even in the streets of London, and heal the rifts not only between us and the environment but also within ourselves. The book is as fascinating psychologically as it is lyrical in its observations of nature.
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