This is a selection of short prose pieces from four published books. It looks like the last piece, A Sportsman's Tale (1909), had not previously been published.

I wouldn't even call these pieces "stories". They don't really have plots. They are more like meditations on situations. There is a lot of descriptions of places here and of people, animals, plants, hills, etc. Edward Thomas was a grand wanderer. I think that these places or situations or experiences were all based on actual concrete situations which he then created a little story snippet to make a kind of frame.

These are a bit like tiny hors d'oeuvre sandwiches. Even the whole book doesn't really amount to any kind of satisfying meal. But it definitely serves to whet one's appetite!

I am reminded a bit of the book Porius by John Cowper Powys. Powys can spend three pages describing the way water drips from a fern, and then allocate barely a paragraph to narrate a fierce battle with dozens of warriors.

Yeah I suppose this kind of writing could qualify as early magical realism. Simple events become windows into vast spaces, through dream and memory and just rich attention to sensory experience. ( )