Once they Lived in Gloucestershire

By Linda Hart, 1995. Updated edition, 2024.

The ultimate guide to the lives and poems of the Dymock Poets: Lascelles Abercrombie, Rupert Brooke, John Drinkwater, Robert Frost, Wilfrid Gibson, and Edward Thomas. It remains, in the words of Matthew Hollis, “The best introduction to the work of the Dymock Poets”.

This new edition of the anthology has been published by the Friends of the Dymock Poets, as a result of the generous agreement of the original author, Linda Hart. It incorporates small updates and enhancements to the original 1995 text.

About this book

The book includes biographies of all six Dymock Poets, together with selections of their poems:

Lascelles Abercrombie John Drinkwater Robert Frost

Wilfrid Gibson Rupert Brooke Edward Thomas

Linda Hart has selected almost sixty poems for inclusion here. These are the poems most closely related to the time the poets spent in the Dymock countryside of north-west Gloucestershire in the years before the first World War. An introductory essay about each poet shows how their lives intertwined in various ways between 1908 and 1917, and also provides background information about the poems.

“The best introduction to the work of the Dymock Poets remains Linda Hart’s Once They Lived in Gloucestershire.” — Matthew Hollis

“This is an overview of a literary phenomenon, a rare thing to find. It is easy to be confused by the Dymock poets, who they were, where they came from, what happened to them. Linda Hart, who knows the neighbourhood intimately, and the writers, has mastered it all.” — U A Fanthorpe

“I think this is how an anthology should be – the headnotes perceptive and primed with passion; the poems individual and interweaving. It inspires us to read further, taking us from putting in the seeds, to the forest of real poetry that rose from that gentle Dymock countryside; quite an achievement for a slim volume” — Gabriel Woolf

“An unusual and valuable collection.” — Contemporary Review

Product Details

Title: Once they Lived in Gloucestershire

Author: Linda Hart

First published in 1995 by Green Branch Press
This 2024 edition is published by Friends of the Dymock Poets
www.dymockpoets.org.uk

Paperback: 80 pages

ISBN: 978 1 80517 565 0