Thomas, Dylan

Estimate

2,000 - 2,500 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Thomas, Dylan
Autograph letter signed, to Charles Fisher
ink on paper

asking for news of the 'Kardomah Gang' from Swansea "in the last days of the fall of the British Empire" whilst he grows "fat and slothful" staying with his mother-in-law with his heavily pregnant wife ("...Our baby should be born at the end of next week, we wait and it kicks..."), one page, Blashford, Ringwood, Hampshire, [January 1939]

Literature

The Collected Letters, ed. P. Ferris (2000), pp.402-403

Catalogue Note

"...This flat English country levels the intelligence, planes down the imagination, narrows the a's, my ears belch up old wax and misremembered passages of misunderstood music, I sit and hate my mother-in-law, glowering at her from corners and grumbling about her in the sad, sticky, quiet of the lavatory..."

Charles Fisher (1914-2006) had known Thomas since their schooldays at Swansea Grammar School, and the two had been part of the same literary and artistic set in Swansea in the early 1930s. Fisher was a promising poet, worked alongside Thomas on the South Wales Evening Post, and also wrote for BBC Radio. Dylan and Caitlin Thomas's son, Llewelyn, was born on 30 January.