A Last Sheaf

Part One

• Sickert at St. Peter's (first published in Horizon magazine, Vol. VI, No. 32, 1942)[4]
• The Earth's Crust (first published in Contact magazine, Sept-Oct 1950, along with a reproduction of "The Coffin House")
• Memories of a Vanished Period
• A Fragment of a Life Story (first published in Horizon magazine, No. 117, 1949)
• A Party
• Evergreen Seaton-Leverett (first published in Orpheus II, John Lehmann 1949)
• A Picture in the Snow
• Ghosts
• The Hateful Word
• The Diamond Badge (first published in part as "The Visit" in Penguin New Writing 38, 1949)

Part Two

• A Novel Fragment (Chapter I first published alone in Life and Letters, Vol. 65, June 1950[5])

Part Three

• Poems (67 poems, of which 15 had previously been published in magazines and journals including Abinger Chronicle, Penguin New Writing, The Adelphi and The Spectator)

Part Four

• Nine Paintings by Denton Welch

Response to the collection was mainly positive, focusing heavily on the Sickert piece[6] and considering the book to be a memorial to its author.[7] Robert Phillips, writing over 20 years later, characterised the collection as "a mixed bag", although this seems to describe the mix of genres in the book rather than a qualitative assessment.[8] Overall, however, Phillips reflects that A Last Sheaf did not enhance Welch's critical reputation in the way that the preceding publications did, and publication of the journals would subsequently do.[9]

The only detailed analysis of the poems in A Last Sheaf also comes from Phillips. This also remains the only substantial analysis of Welch's poetry, and even here it is restricted to those in this selection.[10] Phillips finds Welch's poems to be generally quite poor, ranking with his art (which he does not rate very highly either[11]). He finds in some of them sub-Housman allusion,[12] an excess of adverbs and adjectives,[13] and sometimes ill-judged use of rhyme.[14] Ironically, for Phillips, Welch's most "poetic" language is in fact to be found in his prose.[15] Nonetheless, despite their inferior status, Phillips does find in them redeeming features: vivid gothick imagery, often shocking juxtapositions (as in "Jane Allen",[16] Welch's most-reprinted poem) and a keener awareness of the war raging around him than in his prose.[17]

Phillips' views on Welch's poems in the book have not been universally shared, however. Not long after they were published, the English composer Howard Ferguson set five of Welch's poems from A Last Sheaf for voice and piano. The work, entitled Discovery, was a favourite concert piece of Kathleen Ferrier, who went on to record it.

Thirteen of Welch's poems were included in the text of his Journals, published the year after A Last Sheaf. It would be almost twenty-five years before any more of his poetry appeared in print again, in the 1976 anthology, Dumb Instrument.