Dylan Thomas

Set of Thomas's writings inscribed to the poet, writer and artist José García Villa.

• Sold as a set of 2.
• Dylan Thomas (English).

The Selected Writings.

New York: New Directions, 1946.

Octavo.

Inscribed twice on the flyleaf.

Bound in original green cloth, top edge red, with red printed dustjacket.

Collected Poems.

New York: New Directions, 1953.

Octavo.

Inscribed on the flyleaf.

Includes a photographic portrait frontispiece.

Bound in original blue cloth and printed dustjacket.

These books were owned by José García Villa, to whom they are both inscribed. Villa was born in Manila in 1908, before moving to New Mexico to pursue his studies, and ultimately to Greenwich Village in New York City. There, he joined a community of modernist poets, including e.e. cummings, Marianne Moore and W.H. Auden, among others, and was affectionately known as "The Pope of Greenwich Village." He wrote his poems under the pseudonym Doveglion (a composite of dove, eagle and lion) and was admired, according to Marianne Moore, for "the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems." His 1933 story collection, Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others, was "the first work of fiction by a Filipino writer published by a major United States-based press." Villa received “numerous honors and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Philippines Heritage Award, a Poetry Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Shelley Memorial Award. In 1973 he was named a National Artist of the Philippines, and he also served as a cultural advisor to the Philippine government. He died in New York City on February 7, 1997.”

This item is final sale and not eligible for return.

José García Villa