Dylan Thomas:  A Biography by Paul Ferris is a 399-page hardcover published by The Dial Press, this is the first USA printing of 1977.  The dust jacket has small chips and shelf wear along the edges and sun fading along the spine.  The book has minor bumping to the top of the spine and top corners.  Otherwise the pages are crisp and clean.

Book Summary

Few poets have excited such extremes of admiration and hostility as Dylan Thomas, the Welshman who was perhaps the greatest lyric poet of our century.  Thomas persisted  to the end in fostering an image of the poet as an intense and decadent individual.  He lived in poverty despite his considerable income and shocked his public with his love affairs and drinking drinking while demanding recognition as an artist.  But whenever this difficult man read his works, he was accepted on his own terms--his audiences were enthralled.  

Paul Ferris's authoritative new biography is based on a wealth of previously unpublished material (including two poems) gathered by the author in more than two hundred interviews and extensive research in Britain and America.  In his beautifully written narrative Mr. Ferris gives us new insights into Thomas's childhood and adolescence, his arrival on the London literary scene, his marriage to Caitlin Macnamara, his wartime career as a film writer, his visits to the United States, his death.  Mr. Ferris's work has been justly hailed in England as the definitive Thomas biography, a gold mine for scholars as well as for the general reader.

Kingsley Amis in the Observer:  "A hilarious, shocking, sad story.  Mr. Ferris has sifted through a great mass of material, written and oral, and assembled his findings with outstanding care and skill.  This is a brilliant book."

John Morgan in the New Statesman:  "A classic of literary biography."

Terence Winch in Book World:  "Intelligent, well written and impressively documented...ranks with the best literary biographies of recent years."

George Gale in the Spectator:  "Ferris's book is stamped with authority and authenticity, and I shall be surprised if a better biography of anybody is produced this year, or of Dylan Thomas ever."