5 Dylan Thomas first editions are documented on this shelf, from 18 Poems (1934) to Under Milk Wood (1954) across 4 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Dylan Thomas title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Dylan Thomas copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- 18 Poems — 1934 · The Sunday Referee and The Parton Bookshop, LondonLondon: The Sunday Referee and The Parton Bookshop, published December 1934 (18 December 1934) — Thomas's first book, issued a month after his twentieth birthday, sponsored by the Sunday Referee after he won its "Poet's Corner" prize in April 1934, with the Referee and David Archer's Parton Bookshop sharing the printing costs. 500 sets of sheets were printed but only 250 were bound up and issued in 1934 as the…. UK only, and the census claim is correct: The Sunday Referee / Parton Bookshop, London, 1934 is the true first and Thomas's debut. No American edition of 18 Poems is recorded, and there is no competing British edition or original-language question, so US collectors pursue the London first issue. Precedence operates within the edition rather than between countries: the December 1934 first issue (flat spine,…. No book-club edition. The documented later-issue tell is the February 1936 second issue of the original sheets — rounded spine, trimmed fore-edges, and the tipped-in Parton Bookshop advertisement leaf facing the title. Because both issues carry the 1934 sheets and the 1934 title page, the title-page date cannot distinguish them; only the spine shape, the fore-edge and the advertisement leaf do. This is the single….
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog — 1940 · J.M. Dent & SonsTrue first is J.M. Dent & Sons, London, published 4 April 1940 in a stated first printing of 1,500 copies (after Ralph Maud's bibliography; corroborated by Wikipedia and dealer catalogues). Bound in green cloth boards lettered in silver-gilt on the spine, with the top edge stained red, in a priced dust jacket. First issue carries no later-impression statement on the copyright leaf/verso. The London Dent edition (4 April 1940) precedes the first American edition from New Directions, Norfolk, Connecticut, published later in 1940 (reported September 1940), so the Dent issue is the true first. The New Directions edition is a separate setting bound in red cloth (versus Dent's green), so cloth colour cleanly separates the two first-appearance issues. The New Directions printing is a distinct first-American issue, not a reprint of the Dent sheets. Later Dent impressions add a reprint notice; there is no book-club issue of note for the true first.
- Deaths and Entrances — 1946 · J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, LondonFirst edition, first impression: small octavo, 66 pp., bound in orange cloth with the backstrip lettered in gilt, the copyright page reading "First published 1946" with no added impression or reprint line. The first printing was 3,000 copies (Rolph B10). The jacket should be present, unclipped, with the price still at the front flap. Dent reprinted quickly and the common trap is a later impression: copies dated…. Dent (London), 1946 is the only first edition of this collection. No separately published American edition is recorded: an Open Library sweep of the title returns Dent imprints only (plus much later fine-press printings), and no US issue appears in the trade. American readers met these poems — including "Fern Hill" and "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" — in New Directions' Selected…. No book-club edition documented. The documented later-issue tells are Dent's own reprints — the 1947 and 1949 printings and the 1965 and later Dent reissues — which add a reprint or impression line to the copyright page; jackets on later impressions carry a different flap price from the first.
- In Country Sleep and Other Poems — 1952 · New Directions, New YorkFirst edition, New Directions, New York, 1952. 34 pp.; six poems — 'Over Sir John's Hill', 'Poem on His Birthday', 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night', 'Lament', 'In the White Giant's Thigh' and 'In Country Sleep'. A duotone portrait of Thomas by Marion Morehouse is tipped onto the title page. Two issues, both 1952: a signed limited issue of 100 copies on Stoneridge paper, bound in beige cloth lettered in…. The US edition is the true first — an uncommon case for Thomas. New Directions, New York, 1952 is the only separate edition of this title; no separate UK edition of In Country Sleep has been traced in dealer or library records consulted. In Britain the six poems appeared within Collected Poems 1934–1952 (J. M. Dent, London, 1952), a collected volume rather than a competing first of this title. Within the New…. No book-club issue documented for this title. The common 'first thus' traps are later New Directions printings and the poems' collected appearance (Dent, London, 1952; New Directions, New York, 1953). Absence of the tipped-in Morehouse portrait from the title page, or a jacket lacking the price at the flap, should prompt closer examination of the copy.
- Under Milk Wood — 1954 · J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, LondonFirst edition, first impression: octavo, pp. ix + 101, in the publisher's brown cloth lettered in gilt at the spine, with the preface and musical settings by Daniel Jones. The copyright page reads "First published 1954" with no impression line added; the play reprinted immediately and copies stating the second, third and fourth impressions of the first edition circulate freely — a listing that says "first…. The Dent (London) 1954 issue is the true first book publication and precedes New Directions (New York), 1954, which the trade uniformly describes as the first American edition. Both editions are collected — the Dent as the first, the New Directions as the first American — but only Dent is the true first. Sources disagree on the exact month of the Dent issue (February is the most repeated date; at least one dealer…. No book-club edition documented for the 1954 issue. The reprint tells are Dent's own impression statements on the copyright page, and the later Dent/Everyman and New Directions paperback reissues, which are still in print and are "first thus" at best.
More Poetry, Beat & Drama shelves: Edward Albee, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Eugene O'Neill, Ezra Pound, Federico García Lorca.
← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.