Dylan Thomas' Wales [Hardcover]

Hilary Laurie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1999

Dylan Thomas returned time and again in his verse to Wales, particularly the area around Laugharne, which gave rise to his most famous verse play, Under Milk Wood. Come to know the Welsh towns and countryside that were his home and inspiration, with Hilary Laurie, the editor in charge of his estate, as your guide. The writer's haunts include Cwmdonkin Park opposite his parents' house in Swansea; his aunt's farm at Fernhill; the long, curving shore at Rhossili on the Gower peninsula; and the fields and farms around Llanstephan, where his mother's relatives lived. The color and black-and-white photographs show the places he loved, as well as Thomas himself--as a young boy posing in a photographer's studio with his mother, sister, and a family friend, preparing for a radio broadcast. A vivid sense of the man and the country he was so passionate about is conveyed in this book. 160 pages, 60 color illus., 40 b/w illus., 7 3/8 x 9 3/4.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hilary Laurie was born in Ireland. She has worked for the Queen's University, Belfast, the West African Examinations Council I Lagos, and the British Council in Tehran. For several years she was Publishing Director of J.M. Dent and Everyman Paperbacks and was responsible for current editions of Dylan Thomas's work. She now divides her time between publishing, researching and writing.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Sterling; 1St Edition edition (December 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0297824813
• ISBN-13: 978-0297824817
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,662,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars And the knock of sailing boats on the net-webbed wall, April 1, 2001

By 

dylanissimus "dylanissimus" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dylan Thomas' Wales (Hardcover)

Hilary Laurie's pictorial biography is a worthy successor to John Ackerman's "Welsh Dylan", a book we first encountered in the middle 1980s. Laurie's book, "Dylan Thomas's Wales," combines colour photographs of modern-day Wales with old black-and-whites of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas, Dylan's parents and children; the text is an accurate chronicle of the poet's life, from schoolboy mischief to the turbulence of his more famous years. Laurie's tone toward her subject is one of deep respect, with a keen eye to Thomas's faults (usually described by Thomas himself, in the letters which Laurie excerpts).

There is, as there must be, a generous sampling of some of Dylan Thomas's more famous poems, the lines that echo in the brain and heart for twenty decades after you've read them. Occasionally, the texts of the poems are almost undetectably inaccurate, a plural noun made singular or a definite article omitted, but these objections aside, Laurie has done a fantastic job in making the life of Dylan Thomas quite vivid, and in giving American readers a fairly good visual impression of the landscape in which Thomas was immersed.

A photograph from "Welsh Dylan" (Ackerman's book) that might have been included is that of the club-wielding chalk giant, etched into the hill of Cerne Abbas, a landmark that inspired Dylan Thomas's poem "In the White Giant's Thigh." But that photograph of a youthful Mrs Thomas clutching the hay to conceal her birthdaysuitedness (p 79) might be, for some, apt compensation.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite photos, poems, letters in one gorgeous volume, December 29, 2000

By 

"mnlily" (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dylan Thomas' Wales (Hardcover)

I have never been able to see the exact places that Dylan Thomas wrote about, so this book was very meaningful to me. I didn't expect to see Caitlin Thomas in a field dressed only in hay, but she's here, too. Especially touching is a photo of Dylan with Pamela Hansford Johnson. They look happy, but the caption reads: "This visit convinced her of the hopelessness of their relationship."

The text is part biography, part letters, part poems. Photos of places he lived, walked, played. Probably over a hundred photos in the book, most of which this Dylan Thomas addict had never seen.