The Cyder Press is an imprint originally established by the Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education (now the University of Gloucestershire) as an extension of the resources provided by its existing Dymock Poets Archive and Study Centre. 
The latter promotes interest in the work of a group of poets who briefly gathered in the village of Dymock, on the north-western borders of Gloucestershire, just before the First World War. Lascelles Abercrobie and Wilfrid Gibson were the founders of the community, to be joined by Robert Frost in 1914; visitors in the months that followed included Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, John Drinkwater and Eleanor Farjeon. 
Four issues of a literary periodical, New Numbers, featuring the work of Abercrombie, Brooke, Gibson and Drinkwater, were produced before the Great War brought about the group's demise.

The principal function of The Cyder Press is to reprint long out-of-print or little-known works by the Dymock Poets themselves, and by other cognate writers with regional, literary or period connections. Each volume has an introduction by a contemporary scholar, and a brief indication of further reading for those who may wish to explore an unfamiliar writer's work in greater depth.

The Press also publishes the annual Laurie Lee Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the University of Gloucestershire and presented at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. Delivered in October, the speaker is a well-known writer or critic lecturing on a topic suited to the occasion, although not necessarily on Laurie Lee's work.

JOHN PHILIPS, CYDER - A POEM IN TWO BOOKS
John Philips was born in Herefordshire on 30 December 1676 and died thirty-three years later in 1709, and is buried in Hereford Cathedral. Philips's poetry is not well known, except to eighteenth-century scholars, and this new edition of his major work Cyder - A Poem In Two Books represents an opportunity for a poet with strong regional connections to receive a wider readership.

Ann Yearsley (`The Bristol Milkwoman'), Selected Poems, a new scholarly edition.
Ann Yearsley (1756-1806), aka "The Bristol Milkwoman", was that rare being, a late-18th-century working-class woman poet. Her patron was Hannah More, the celebrated Bristol poet, playwright and philanthropist, and Yearsley's poetry was widely read in the 1780s and '90s by aristocrats, gentry and trades people. After her death she slipped from view, her work becoming relatively inaccessible to all but 18th-century scholars. 

Thomas Chatterton, Selected Poems, a new scholarly edition. £7.50
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was only seventeen when he died, and spent most of his short life in his home town of Bristol. Best known as a literary forger, between the ages of fifteen and seventeen he produced an extensive corpus of fake medieval poems, plays and letters by the (fictitious) 15th-century monk Thomas Rowly. Few of Chatterton's forgeries were published in his lifetime, but when the poems appeared posthumously in 1777, the Rowley controversy became the literary debate of the day, with Chatterton's authorship of them being only generally accepted in 1782. This edition has been prepared for the Cyder Press by Dr Nick Groom.

Laurie Lee, Three Plays, (first publication of these. `forgotten' works). £7.50
  Three forgotten plays by the author of Cyder With Rosie. Introduced by Jane Mack, West Cheshire College. Peasants' Priest, Black Saturday and Red Sunday and I Call Me Adam presented in one volume.

John Masefield, Salt-Water Ballads (1902; facsimile).
John Masefield's first book containing over fifty poems including "Sea Fever", "The West Wind" and "Cardigan Bay".  

John Masefield, Ballads (1903; facsimile). £7.50
John Masefield's second volume of poetry containing nineteen poems, including the standard English anthology piece "Cargoes".

Edward Thomas, Four-and-Twenty, Blackbirds (1915; facsimile with full-colour frontispiece - his only book for children).  
The only one of Edward Thomas's prose works aimed specifically at children - although adults will also find it fascinating both in itself and as an unexpected extension of Thomas's range as a writer. A facsimile-style reprint of the first edition.

Edward Thomas on Thomas Hardy: all his known writings about Hardy (including correspondence between them). Edward Thomas's relationship to Thomas Hardy suggests that rare thing, a genuine affinity of minds between the younger poet and the older one. This collection edited by Trevor Johnson contains all Thomas's known writings about Hardy, including reviews, chapters from books, and letters from Thomas to Hardy, also Hardy's sole surviving letter to Thomas.

Edward Thomas on the Georgians: a unique selection of his pre-WWI reviews of contemporary poetry. Selected and edited by Richard Emeny.
This selection concentrates on the reviews which were published in Edward Marsh's first Georgian Poetry anthology in 1912, the only one Thomas was able to review before the First World War swallowed him up. This edition has been selected, edited and introduced specially for The Cyder Press by Richard Emeny, former secretary of the Edward Thomas Fellowship.
EDWARD THOMAS, The Country  (1913), facsimile, introduced by Professor Stan Smith, The Nottingham Trent University.
Now known chiefly as a poet, Edward Thomas (1878-1917) wrote a substantial amount of prose on many subjects. His Georgian Gergic, The Country, was first published in 1913 by Batsford, and has never previously been reprinted. The present volume reproduces that edition as it first appeared. Introduction by Stan Smith, Professor of English, The Nottingham Trent University.

EDWARD THOMAS, Keats (1916), facsimiles, introduced by Richard Emeny, freelance writer, researcher, and secretary of the Edward Thomas Fellowship.
The now well-known and admired poet, Edward Thomas (1878-1917), also wrote a substantial amount of prose on many topics. His largely forgotten but penetrating volume, Keats, was first published in T.C. and E.C. Jack's series "The People's Books" in 1916. This first and only edition is reproduced in the present volume. Introduction by Richard Emery, Secretary of the Edward Thomas Fellowship.  

£5 each
unless otherwise stated
To order email us at: contactus@courtyardbooks.co.uk

£5 each
unless otherwise stated
To order email us at: contactus@courtyardbooks.co.uk

A limited and numbered "fine-art" edition of ROBERT FROST'S little known children's stories, As Told to a Child with colour plates of illustrations by his own children, introduced by Dr Lesley Lee Francis,
Frost's granddaughter.

The inaugural Laurie Lee Memorial Lecture booklets:

No 1: VALERIE GROVE (Lee's biographer), Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger  
The text of the inaugural lecture delivered by Valerie Grove in October 1999 as part of the 50th anniversary of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. The annual Laurie Lee Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the University of Gloucestershire at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature in October each year. 

No 2:: ANDREW MOTION (the Poet Laureate), William Barnes  
The text of the lecture delivered by Andrew Motion in October 2000 at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. The annual Laurie Lee Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the University of Gloucestershire at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature in October each year.

ONCE THEY LIVED IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE - A DYMOCK POETS ANTHOLOGY by Linda Hart. £6.95

Here for the first time between the covers of one book, are poems by all six Dymock Poets: Lascelles Abercrombie, John Drinkwater, Robert Frost, Wilfred Gibson, Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas. Published by Green Branch Press

A WARTIME POETRY JOURNAL by Effie M. Roberts. £9.99

This recently published anthology edited by the author's granddaughter Phillipa Roberts is now available from Courtyard Books. E. M. Roberts wrote her journal of poetry in World War 2. Times were very bleak but she rarely lost her sense of humour or her courage.