Published by Renard Press

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A Fool i’ the Forest: A Phantasmagoria: Centenary Edition

Richard Aldington

Edited by Michael Copp and Elizabeth Vandiver

Renard Press

Paperback

100pp

ISBN: 9781804471715

Poetry

Publication date: 22 October 2025

Rights: World

£10

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First published in 1925, and frequently compared to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, A Fool i’ the Forest is a modernist’s poetic expression of his ongoing struggles with overcoming the trauma of military service in the First World War.

Taking its title from Shakespeare’s phantasmagoric Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Fool surveys three aspects of one character – ‘I’, Mezzetin and the Conjuror – as they struggle, and ultimately fail, to find a way to reconcile their differences and live with one another.

Enriched with a fascinating introduction and explanatory notes by leading Aldington scholars Michael Copp and Elizabeth Vandiver, this centenary edition seeks to place A Fool firmly back into the canon of postwar poetry, from which it has been missing for too long.