Description
An unusual and genuinely scarce piece of Dylan Thomas publishing history: an apparent set of unbound galley or proof sheets for The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, edited by noted Thomas scholar Ralph Maud and published by New Directions in 1967. Rather than a finished bound book, this survives in its pre-publication state as folded printer’s sheets, retaining the transitional and provisional quality collectors love in production material. The front is boldly signed by Maud, whose scholarship helped shape much of the modern understanding and organization of Thomas’s notebooks, manuscripts, and poetic development.
The volume itself was significant upon publication because it drew from the original Dylan Thomas notebooks preserved at the Lockwood Memorial Library at the State University of New York at Buffalo, one of the major institutional repositories associated with Thomas material. Proofs and galleys tied to New Directions publications — especially involving major twentieth-century poets — rarely surface, and when they do, they often disappear quickly into institutional or advanced literary collections. A fascinating artifact from the editorial and production side of postwar literary publishing, sitting somewhere between manuscript, proof copy, and finished book.
A strong piece for collectors of Dylan Thomas, New Directions, literary archives, modern poetry, or publishing history.
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