A Child's Christmas in Wales

Dylan Thomas was born in 1914 in Swansea, where he worked as a reporter on the local newspaper. He published his first volume of poetry, 18 Poems, when he was just twenty years old. Thereafter, bohemian literary life in London alternated with some more positively creative periods back in Wales. He had a celebrated career as a writer for radio and film, and he continued to publish poetry and short stories. From 1950 onwards, Thomas’ attention was given mainly to completing his most famous work, Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices. The poet died in New York in 1953 and is buried at Laugharne.

For a boy growing up in an ordinary town in Wales, summer is 'always radiant, rainless, lazily rowdy and skyblue', and it always snows at Christmas. Weaving through the course of a year, this selection of Dylan Thomas's most evocative and bittersweet stories depicts silent winter mornings by the sea, glorious holidays in the countryside and lovelorn nights in the pub. It ends with 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', perhaps the most beautiful story of the festive season ever written.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 
Luminous and intensely lyrical, Dylan Thomas’ works have captivated generations of readers, inspiring artists like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Igor Stravinsky, and Phoebe Bridgers. This selection includes some of his best poetry, celebrating both inner and outer landscapes in the face of mortality, decay, human weakness, and beckoning readers to ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ Together, they exemplify his legacy as the greatest Welsh poet of the twentieth century.

Luminous and intensely lyrical, Dylan Thomas’ works have captivated generations of readers, inspiring artists like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Igor Stravinsky, and Phoebe Bridgers. This selection includes some of his best poetry, celebrating both inner and outer landscapes in the face of mortality, decay, human weakness, and beckoning readers to ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ Together, they exemplify his legacy as the greatest Welsh poet of the twentieth century.

Selected Poems

Dylan Thomas disturbed the roots of our language in an organic way and gave it a new vitality

The most musical of poets. His work is so full of rhythm and melody that one of life's great pleasures is to read him aloud, feeling those syllables roll around your mouth while the rhythms find their ebb and flow

Dylan Thomas was first and foremost a poet – an inventor of words – a constructor of otherwise grammar. He was a magician

The greatest Welsh poet of the twentieth century, Dylan Thomas harnessed the very music of language, giving voice to the inevitable shape of life, its joys and sorrows, losses and wonders. In rich, evocative language, his work captures the intricate beauty and complexities of human existence – from the haunting verses of ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ to the nostalgic reverie of ‘Fern Hill’. Here, roadside bushes brim with whistling blackbirds, blind eyes blaze like meteors, love remains when lovers are lost and time ticks a heaven round the stars. 
 
This new selection brings together poems from Thomas’ Collected Poems 1934–1952, published during his lifetime, along with a few rare gems that offer a deeper insight into his creative world and the enduring power of his poetic genius.

Dylan Thomas

Nerys Williams

A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality

Roguish, prancing, with blazing characters and lines. The words dizzied me, their grandeur, their wit

A dazzling combination of poetic fireworks and music-hall humor

Brilliant - time hasn't dimmed it, his language remains bracingly wild, elemental and weird

I could get drunk just on the sound of the words … or on the boisterous Welshness of his humour

Dylan Thomas...was the most musical of poets. His work is so full of rhythm and melody that one of life's great pleasures is to read him aloud, feeling those syllables roll around your mouth while the rhythms find their ebb and flow

A Play for Voices

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent... 
 
In the Welsh seaside town of Llareggub, night is moving in the streets. Its inhabitants are lost in the land of dreams: old Captain Cat catches up with his drowned shipmates, Mog Edwards the draper is consumed by mad love for Miss Price the dressmaker, and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard whips the ghosts of her two late husbands into shape. As the sun rises, the ‘dismays and rainbows’ of each character are played out within the cycle of one day, intertwining voices and lives, dreams and reality. By turns tender, hilarious and beautifully lyrical, Dylan Thomas's ‘play for voices’ is his most beloved work and a landmark of Welsh literature.

Dylan Thomas

Praise for Under Milk Wood

A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality

Dylan Thomas disturbed the roots of our language in an organic way and gave it a new vitality

Roguish, prancing, with blazing characters and lines. The words dizzied me, their grandeur, their wit

A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality

Dylan Thomas disturbed the roots of our language in an organic way and gave it a new vitality

Roguish, prancing, with blazing characters and lines. The words dizzied me, their grandeur, their wit

A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality

Dylan Thomas disturbed the roots of our language in an organic way and gave it a new vitality

Roguish, prancing, with blazing characters and lines. The words dizzied me, their grandeur, their wit

Books by Dylan Thomas

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