Helen Thomas (1877–1967)

Abstract

Her two memoirs, As It Was and World Without End were, according to her daughter Myfanwy, written as a form of therapy to lift the depression which settled over her after her husband, Edward, was killed at the front in 1917. Her tender, yet frank, account of their married life apparently violated the conventional standards of respect due the heroic dead. Although the original volumes appeared with the names of all the characters disguised, Robert Frost, a good friend of the Thomases, was so appalled by their sexual honesty that he dropped a dedication to Helen that appeared in a volume of his poetry. The book was, moreover, banned in Boston. Nevertheless the two accounts rapidly found an appreciative audience and have remained steadily in print, usually as one volume. The latest edition (Carcanet, 1987) contains the text of both with the real names restored and with the addition of letters and further reminiscences by Helen and selections from Myfanwy Thomas’s autobiographical account One of These Fine Days (1982).