Long-Lost Dylan Thomas Manuscript Found

A notebook of drafts of some of Dylan Thomas’s most famous poems has been rediscovered, offering valuable insight into the poet’s creative process. Pages of the notebook include 19 poems in various states of completion, with several sections scratched out and revised. The book is set to sell at auction for more than $156,430. Thomas is thought to have discarded the book at his mother-in-law’s house sometime during the 1930s. Thomas and his mother-in-law, named Yvonne Macnamara, did not get along. She gave the book to a maid and ordered her to dispose of it, but the maid, Louie King, opted to save it instead. John Goodby, the editor of Thomas’s Collected Poems, said, “For some of the poems included, we’ve never had manuscript versions before, and they show significant changes were made; most of them are fair copies of finished poems, but some are more like worksheets—they allow us to see how he arrived at a certain phrase, to see what he’s up to.”