The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas

[Dylan Thomas] Fitzgibbon, Constantine (ed.)

Published by J.M. Dent Ltd., London,, 1966

About this Item

First edition: octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 432pp., top edges dyed maroon. Minor wear. Dustwrapper slightly rubbed with mild wear to edges; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good to near fine. Postage quoted is for a standard format octavo book. Final charges may vary depending on size and weight. Dylan Thomas's letters bring the poet and his times to life in a way that almost no biography can. The letters begin in the poet's schooldays, and end just before his death in New York at the age of 39. In between, he loved, wrote, drank, begged and borrowed his way through a flamboyant life. He was an enthusiastic critic of other writers' work and the letters are full of his thoughts on his own work and on his friends, as well as unguarded and certainly unpolitical comments on the work of his contemporaries - T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender among others. ('Spender should be kicked. Day-Lewis hissed in public and have his balls beaten with a toffee hammer') These letters cast Thomas's adolescence in Swansea and his love affair with Caitlin into sharper focus. Thomas's letters tell a remarkable story, each letter taking the reader a little further along the path of the poet's self-destruction, but written with such verve and lyricism that somehow the reader's sympathies never quite abandon him.

Seller Inventory # 44078

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas
• Publisher: J.M. Dent Ltd., London,
• Publication Date: 1966