SOURCE: "Recapitulation," in Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work, Little, Brown & Co., 1909, pp. 317-28.

A poet, novelist, and critic, Thomas is the most prominent twentieth-century representative of the tradition of nature poetry in English literature. His verse displays a profound love of natural beauty and, at times, an archaic tone and diction. In the following essay, Thomas assesses the impact of Jefferies's personal life on his writings.

Richard Jefferies was … always a child of the soil, as well as of the earth in a larger sense. From father and mother he had the blood of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire farmers. He was the second child (the eldest child, a daughter, died young) of a younger son of a younger son. But it was country blood with a difference: both Gyde and Jefferies had been dipped in London, and had followed there the trade of printing; and though old John...