Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas

Presentation copy from Dylan Thomas to David Markson. Second edition. 8vo. 212x135mm. xxiii [ibl], 184. Original red cloth, slightly faded in places in original dustjacket, chipped along the top edge with a piece (25x10mm) missing from top corner. Internally very good with extensive underlinings and a marginal annotation in blue ink, all by Markson. Inscribed on the front free endpaper: "From Dylan in the West End Tavern to Dave under the volcano. 1952". Beneath this Thomas has also written: "In London, 54 Delancey St. Camden Town, N.W.1. In Wales, Boat House, Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, Wales". On the front pastedown is a photograph of Thomas and Markson as well as Markson's ownership inscription. He has also inscribed his initials "DMM" on the bottom edge of text block. In early 1952 Dylan Thomas was giving a series of readings at the 92nd Street YMCA. David Markson, in a 2007 interview, recalled how after one of these he got talking to Thomas and they went for a drink at the West End, near Columbia University (where Markson was studying). They hit it off and became regular drinking friends at the White Horse Tavern, a legendary bohemian bar in Greenwich Village to which Thomas introduced Markson and where the latter soon became a fixture. This book was surely given to Markson at that first meeting on the Upper West Side. Thomas must have been carrying it with him and perhaps had been using it in his reading. The reference to "Under the Volcano" in Thomas's inscription is a recognition of Markson's obsession with Malcolm Lowry's novel about which he was writing his thesis at Columbia. They would, obviously, have talked about Lowry as Thomas had met him in England where they bonded over drink and literature. Thomas and Lowry continued to meet in Vancouver (near Lowry's home) where they got together for monumental drinking sessions. When, in early November 1953, Thomas was admitted to hospital in New York, Lowry wrote to a friend: "I'm very grieved to hear old Dylan's under the weather, if you see him give him our love and best wishes for a speedy recovery". That recovery never happened as Thomas died on 9th November. Lowry's friend - the recipient of this note - was David Markson. By 1953, Markson was two years into his thesis (which was later published as Malcolm Lowry's Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning, a near mint signed proof copy of which is sold with this selection of Thomas's work) and the two were close, Lowry treating the younger man as the son he never had. Success came late to Markson when, after fifty-four publishers had rejected his manuscript of Wittgenstein's Mistress, it was finally published by Dalkey Archive Press and received huge critical acclaim, David Foster Wallace later describing it as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country". This copy of Thomas Selected Writings brings together this fascinating Thomas/Lowry/Markson web.…