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.
