Edward Thomas is now best known for the poetry he wrote between 1914 and his untimely death at the Front in 1917. But during his lifetime, his reputation was based on the extraordinary body of travel writings, reviews, and critical books that he produced against intense pressure. of the deadline. to feed his growing family. His travel books, especially Oxford and The South Country, have had an enduring appeal to all lovers of the English countryside. Through these and his later poems, Thomas has come to be regarded as the quintessential English writer. And yet he was Welsh, he watched and loved England like a semi-stranger. Oxford, published three years after completing his BA, was Thomas's first major commission. In it, he gives an evocative account of the architecture, history, and customs of Oxford, drawing on personal memories of university life at Lincoln College. His prose was written to accompany the paintings of John Fulleylove, R.I., who shared his interest in juxtaposing the grandeur of Oxford with the ordinary details of domestic life. Between them, the artist and the writer capture the beauty of this "city within the heart" at a pivotal moment in pre-war history, and give it to us as if it could last forever in that way. In a critical Introduction, Lucy Newlyn examines the importance of Oxford as a historical memory. But he also argues that it is vivid experimental prose, anticipating much of Thomas' later greatness. His analysis of his prose style shows how Thomas tests the voices of the past, defining his own particular brand of modernism by creating a kind of "bricolage" through allusion and imitation. Continuously under the elaborate ventriloquism of the text is the ruminant and silent voice of the real Thomas, ever closer to the simple rhythms of speech of his lyrical poems. This is Oxford's first critical edition, which has long credited the book as an early masterpiece in the work of Thomas.