Collected Stories

by Dylan Thomas

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. 

Genres: Short Stories

384 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2023

About the author

Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953) was a Welsh poet who wrote in English. Many regard him as one of the 20th century's most influential poets.

In addition to poetry, Thomas wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times, ostentatious voice, with a subtle Welsh lilt, became almost as famous as his works. His best-known work includes the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Appreciative critics have also noted the superb craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my craft or sullen art" and the rhapsodic lyricism of Fern Hill.

Reviews

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

My April short story collection did not disappoint. "A Child's Christmas in Wales" was my favorite and probably the most well-known. Most of the stories were not plot driven but written with a beautiful poetic style capturing a slice of life scene. In many cases, there was what seemed like a psychedelic aspect to them.

[Jody Stowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was weird