The Making of a Poet: A Scholarly Edition of Ivor Gurney's Poetry, 1907 to Armistice 1918

Abstract

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) was equally gifted as a poet and a composer. While a very small number of pieces of juvenilia survive, arising from his passion for and immersion in literature, he began to write poetry following his enlistment as a soldier in the First World War. In this thesis I have prepared an edition of all of Gurney’s poetry from its beginnings until the Armistice on 11 November 1918. The edition of over two hundred poems incorporates 59 poems and fragments that have not previously been published. I have sought to present this body of poetry in chronological order, and with extensive textual notes and commentary, to chart the development of poems through all stages of draft to fnal poem. This has been made possible by an unprecedented detailed analysis of all Gurney’s manuscripts and a wholesale reorganisation of that extensive collection.