The Poetry of Richard Aldington A Critical Evaluation and an Anthology of Uncollected Poems

Together with a critical discussion of Aldington's contribution to modern poetry as a central figure in Imagism, this book gives bibliographical details for all of the poet's first editions and collections, texts of a hundred and seventeen uncollected poems from periodicals and unpublished manuscripts, and eighty-seven early poems omitted from Aldington's Complete Poems. This is the first book-length study of Aldington's poetry since his death in 1962. Because Aldington moved in the center of literary life in England for several decades, it also is a source of information on many of his contemporaries including Yeats, Eliot, both Lawrences, H. D.," Joyce, Amy Lowell, and William Carlos Williams. On the bibliographical side, Mr. Gates discusses the thirty-two British and American individual volumes from which Aldington's final collection was made, as well as his contributions to the four Imagist Anthologies. After reviewing criticism of Aldington's poetry since 1910 Mr. Gates has dealt critically with each of the collected volumes by discussing individual poems and by appraising the thrust of the whole. Finally, Mr. Gates has attempted to assess Aldington's position as a poet and as a speaker for his times.