THOMAS, Dylan.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Under Milk Wood. First edition in book form. This copy belonged to Kerith Trick, the son of Thomas's close friend Albert Trick. "Comrade Trick", as Thomas once referred to him, was a well-known radical in Swansea around whom the poet's early intellectual life briefly revolved. The pair intended to start a Welsh literary periodical together titled Prose and Verse but the project never materialized. A gift inscription on the front free endpaper identifies the copy as an Easter present to Kerith in 1954, the year he turned 18. Under Milk Wood was an important literary fixture in the Trick household, Thomas having read embryonic iterations of the story to Albert and his wife Nell at their home under the early title Llareggub. Commissioned as a BBC radio drama, the work was first broadcast on 25 January 1954 and then printed in the magazine Mademoiselle in February 1954, following the author's death in November the previous year. The posthumously published work has since become one of Thomas's best-known.

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