This study offers a comprehensive examination of the work of the young poet and scholar
Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) in the context of a literary-critical revolution of the
late sixties and seventies and evaluates her work against contemporary debates in poetry and
poetics. Gareth Farmer explores Forrest-Thomson's relationship to the conflicting models of
literary criticism in the twentieth century such as the close-reading models of F.R Leavis and
William Empson postructuralist models and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Written by the
leading scholar on Forrest-Thomson's work this study explores Forrest-Thomson's published work
as well as unpublished materials from the Veronica Forrest-Thomson Archive. Drawing on close
readings of Forrest-Thomson's writings this study argues that her work enables us reevaluate
literary-critical history and suggests new paradigms for the literary aesthetics and poetics of
the future.
