Reading Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare, William Wootten

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780571347148
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was one of the best-loved English poets of the twentieth century, his verse admired by contemporaries including Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot. This volume presents a new selection of de la Mare's finest poems, including perennial favourites such as 'Napoleon', 'Fare Well' and 'The Listeners', for a twenty-first-century audience. The poems are accompanied by commentaries by William Wootten, which build up a portrait of de la Mare's life, loves and friendships with the likes of Hardy, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas and Katherine Mansfield. They also point out the fascinating references to literature, folklore and the natural world that embroider the verse.

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Note on the Text
• Table of Dates
• John Mouldy
• The Funeral
• Autumn
• The Birthnight: To F.
• Napoleon
• Longlegs
• King David
• An Epitaph
• Nobody Knows
• The Bells
• The Listeners
• The Scarecrow
• Miss Loo
• Winter Dusk
• The Keys of Morning
• The Pigs and the Charcoal-Burner
• All That’s Past
• ‘The Hawthorn Hath a Deathly Smell’
• A Song of Enchantment
• The Bees’ Song
• The Honey Robbers
• The Mocking Fairy
• The Song of the Mad Prince
• For All the Grief
• Fare Well
• The Scribe
• To E.T.: 1917
• Sotto Voce
• Titmouse
• Good-Bye
• The Railway Junction
• To K.M.
• The Feckless Dinner-Party
• Reflections
• Rose
• Away
• Thomas Hardy
• Dry August Burned
• Incantation
• Brueghel’s Winter
• Swallows Flown
• The Old Summerhouse
• ‘Of a Son’
• The House (‘A lane at the end of Old Pilgrim Street’)
• Dreamland
• Sallie
• The House (‘The rusty gate had been chained and padlocked’)
• Winged Chariot
• De Profundis
• Notes
• Index of Titles and First Lines
• About the Author
• By Walter de la Mare
• Copyright