The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas: Annotated Manuscript Edition

Description

Between May 1930 and August 1935, Dylan Thomas kept numerous notebooks of poems. They contain the drafts of almost all of the work that would form his first two reputation-making collections, 18 Poems (1934) and Twenty-five Poems (1936), and many of those in his third collection, The Map of Love (1939). Thomas sold four of the notebooks, spanning May 1930 to May 1934, to the University of Buffalo in 1941. However, the existence of a fifth notebook, covering the period June 1934 to August 1935, was unknown until 2014, the centenary of his birth. The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas makes this newly-discovered text available to readers and researchers for the first time. It contains the only existing MSS versions of Thomas's most challenging poems, 'I, in my intricate image' and 'Altarwise by owl-light', and fourteen other early poems. It contains facsimiles and full transcripts of the originals, is annotated throughout, and has a full scholarly introduction. Exploring the contexts of these brilliant and experimental lyrics - many with substantial reworkings and variant passages - this landmark publication sheds new light on the creative practice of one of the most important and well-known poets of the twentieth century.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) is one of the most important and popular British poets of the 20th century. He is perhaps best known for his poetic radio play Under Milk Wood John Goodby is Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He is the author of The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall (2013) and editor of the centenary edition of Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems (2014). Adrian Osbourne conducted his doctoral research as the co-editor of Dylan Thomas's fifth notebook, funded by Swansea University's College of Arts & Humanities. He gained his PhD in January 2020, and is currently working on a network visualization project, investigating the correspondence of Modernist writers held in the archives at Swansea University and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas