First the young schoolboy, gloriously immersed in make-believe in a shabby farmyard or beginning to interpret the urgent rituals of old age and courtship. Then the budding poet with his thrilling friendships and dreams of fortune. Finally, the neophyte reporter roaming suburban Swansea for momentous material. In these stories Dylan Thomas shows the exuberance of youth maturing into a fine celebratory compassion and the poet's sheer ironic relish for the eccentricities of common life.

Author Biography

Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea on 27 October 1914, the son of a senior English master. On leaving school he worked on the South Wales Evening Post before embarking on his literary career in London. Not only a poet, he wrote short stories, film scripts, features and radio plays, the most famous being Under Milk Wood. On 9 November 1953, shortly after his thirty-ninth birthday, he collapsed and died in New York city. He is buried in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, which had become his main home since 1949. In 1982 a memorial stone to commemorate him was unveiled in 'Poet's Corner' in Westminster Abbey.