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Collected Stories

Collected Stories

Current price: $21.95
Publication Date: November 7th, 2023
Publisher:
New Directions
ISBN:
9780811237529
Pages:
384
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

Description

Dylan Thomas’s magisterial stories all in one volume, available in a beautiful new paperback edition. 

This gathering of all Dylan Thomas’s stories—ranging chronologically from the dark, almost surrealistic tales of Thomas’s youth to such gloriously rumbustious celebrations of life as “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and “Adventures in the Skin Trade”—charts the progress of “The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive” toward his mastery of the comic idiom. Here, too, are stories originally written for radio and television and, in a short appendix, the schoolboy pieces first published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine. A high point of the collection is Thomas’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog,” a vivid collage of memories from his Swansea childhood that combines the lyricism of his poetry with the sparkle and sly humor of Under Milk Wood. Also here is the fiction from Quite Early One Morning, a collection planned by Thomas shortly before his death.

Altogether there are more than forty stories, providing a rich and varied literary feast and showing Dylan Thomas in all his intriguing variety–somber fantasist, joyous word-spinner, and irrepressible comedian of smalltown Wales. 

About the Author

Dylan Thomas, born in Swansea in 1914, is perhaps Wales’ best-known writer, widely considered to be one of the major poets of the 20th century: many of his greatest poems, such as “Fern Hill” and ”’Do not go gentle into that good night”’ are beloved and widely studied. As well as poetry, Dylan Thomas wrote numerous short stories and scripts for film and radio–none more popular than his radio play Under Milk Wood. He led a fascinating and tempestuous life, which ended all too soon in 1953 when he collapsed and died in New York City shortly after his 39th birthday. 

Praise for Collected Stories

Thomas meant much to me and my generation, he is still singing in his chains like the sea—a force driving the flowers.
— Seamus Heaney

His prose, his images, his stories all pulsate with life, with a beat and a variety that captivate, invigorate, and clarify.
— Los Angeles Times

Thomas’s stories appeal to me because he is required to snake his poetics in between the dialogue and exposition (such as it is), and the form reins in his Biblical tendencies. … In the same way that compilation albums often reveal the hidden strengths of a band, allowing someone else to decide what works, Collected Stories has always been my favorite Thomas, because of its balance. I need a touch of zinc white to even out the purple with this one. The demands of successful fiction bring Thomas and his rambles into the light, where we can see the triumph and regret in every drop.

— Sasha Frere-Jones - 4columns