The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans

The Morgan family live at Abercorran House in Balham – they’re friendly, welcoming, slightly eccentric and Welsh. Arthur Froxfield becomes a frequent visitor and recounts the stories he heard there of swan maidens, the Castle of Leaves and the house of the days of the year.

When Arthur revisits a Morganless Abercorran House he remembers the days spent with Philip roaming through the house, the countryside and “that three-acre field which was the garden of Abercorran House and called by us The Wilderness. Under the trees lay a pond … a pond needs nothing else except boys like us to make the best of it.”

The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans, originally published in 1913, is Edward Thomas’s only novel.

Edward Thomas 1878-1917 was a journalist and literary critic – a close friend of Robert Frost and a champion of W H Davies. He turned from writing prose to poetry in 1914, encouraged by Robert Frost who had recognised an innate poetry in Thomas’s prose writing.

His work as a poet has been celebrated and admired by W H Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Andrew Motion, Michael Longley and in 1985 Ted Hughes described Thomas as “the father of us all”.

Edward Thomas died on Easter Monday 1917 at the battle of Arras.