Adventures in the Skin Trade

This collection of the poet Dylan Thomas's fiction-and what an extraordinary storyteller he was!-holds special interest because it ranges from the early stories such as "The School for Witches" and "The Burning Baby," with their powerful inheritance of Welsh mythology and wild imagination, to the chapters he completed before his death of the alas unfinished novel Adventures in the Skin Trade. Adventures is the story, written in a shrewd, sly, deadpan vein of picaresque comedy, of young Samuel Bennet, who runs away from his home in Wales to seek his fortune in London. Sam soon finds himself involved--all the while with his finger stuck fast in an ale bottle--with a fantastic and whimsical assortment of odd characters whom only Dylan Thomas could have conceived.

Dylan Thomas, born in Swansea in 1914, is perhaps Wales' best-known writer, widely considered to be one of the major poets of the 20th century, and many of his greatest poems, such as 'Fern Hill' and 'Do not go gentle into that good night' remain among the nation's favorites. As well as poetry, Dylan Thomas wrote numerous short stories and scripts for film and radio - none more popular than his radio play UNDER MILK WOOD (ISBN 9780811229937), which is considered by many to be his masterpiece. He led a fascinating and tempestuous life, permeated by love affairs and reckless bouts of drinking, which led him to claim that he had beast, angel and madman within him. There have been several film adaptations of his fascinating life, which ended all too soon in 1953 when he collapsed and died in New York shortly after his 39th birthday. A memorial stone commemorating his life and work was unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1982.