Dylan Remembered: 1914-1934

Dylan Remembered 1913-1934 is the first of two volumes culled from the numerous archive tapes stored at the National Library of Wales following the death of journalist, broadcaster and author Colin Edwards. Edwards, a California-resident Welshman, had interviewed everyone he could find with a Dylan Thomas connection as the groundwork for a biography of the poet which he was unable to begin before his early death. Since the early sixties the tapes have been stored at the NLW, ignored by all of Thomas’s subsequent biographers and researchers. Now David N. Thomas has edited the transcribed tapes into two fascinating collections, the second of which will appear in 2004. An authority on Thomas, the editor has discovered startling new information about Thomas’s life and writing. For the first time, in many cases, we now have well documented evidence of certain aspects of his biography, and the influences on his writing and the sources from which he drew inspiration and storylines. In addition, David Thomas has added his own research, spinning off from the newly-discovered archive material to complete the picture of Dylan’s personal and family background. This book, which covers Dylan’s life to the age of twenty, when he left Swansea for what he hoped would be a bohemian life in London, ends the need for speculation by biographers and researchers. The story, now made fact, is all here in an invaluable book for the academic and the general reader alike.