THOMAS, Dylan. - BILL, Read.

£200 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Days of Dylan Thomas. First edition, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "For F. W. Roberts, with many thanks for your help in the preparation of this book, Bill Read, Boston, January 14, 1965." Roberts was the director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, from 1958 to 1961. Loosely inserted is a print of a pen illustration by Thomas, drawn at the Whitehorse Tavern in NYC, where the poet would drink regularly until his death. The abstract drawing has the caption "Queen Edith Sitwell & Princess Marianne Moore on their first meeting", an image clearly of note to Roberts, who has reproduced it on page 77.Sitwell and Thomas were great admirers of each other, the older poet helping his career many times throughout his short life. In an obituary Sitwell penned for The Atlantic she writes, "following the publication of his second book, a furious attack on him developed in letters addressed to one of the two principal London newspapers. It was my privilege and pride to give the attackers, during two months, more than as good as they gave. The air still seems to reverberate with the wooden sound of numskulls being soundly hit."

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