Long-lost Dylan Thomas notebook heads to Wales after auction

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/09/dylan-thomas-notebook-auction-swansea-university-wales

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A lost notebook containing drafts of some of Dylan Thomas’s most challenging poems is to remain in the UK and more importantly, is heading to Wales after Swansea university successfully bid £85,000 for it at auction in London.

The previously unknown notebook emerged earlier this year and was described by one astonished scholar as the most exciting Thomas discovery since the poet’s death in 1953.

The winning bid was made on behalf of the university by Jeff Towns, chairman of the Dylan Thomas Society and the owner of Dylan’s Bookstore in Swansea. “I’m overwhelmed,” he said after the sale. “The saliva has only just come back to my mouth I was so dry.

“I’ve been coming to auctions for 40 years but holding this bidding number at the end of the centenary year is incredible ... it is a sensational coup and a real statement of intent from Swansea university.”

The notebook had lain in a drawer for decades with its owners unaware of its huge cultural significance. It is the fifth school exercise book in which Thomas wrote poems with the other four held by the State University of New York at Buffalo and on loan for another week to the National Library of Wales.

The price with premium was £104,500 – a reasonable amount, perhaps, since the estimate had been £100,000-150,000.

Towns said the figure had to be put in perspective. “I walked here from Green Park and there are millions of pounds changing hands for bobbles and baubles on Bond Street and we’re in here excited we got this for £85,000. I’m not making light of £85,000, it is a lot of money, but in the scheme of things ...”

Alongside Towns in the auction room was Prof John Goodby from Swansea university, editor of the centenary edition of Thomas’s Collected Poems.

“It is fantastic, I get to see it again,” he said. “From a Dylan Thomas fetishist view it is great news for me but more importantly it stays in the UK and stays in Wales. There is nothing like this in our holdings so it is fantastic that this part of the Dylan Thomas legacy stays on this side of the Atlantic ... it is maybe about time that the balance swung the other way.”

Seeing it in person was “hard to describe,” he said. “It is a bit like getting close to the Holy Grail, you feel you might be burned on it.”

The notebook contains some of Thomas’s most surreal and downright baffling poetry, such as Altarwise by Owl-light and I, in my intricate image.

If the instructions of Thomas’s mother-in-law had been heeded the notebook would have been destroyed.

Attached to the book when it was presented to Sotheby’s, in a Tesco paper bag, was a note saying: “This Book of Poetry by Dylan Thomas was with a lot of paper given to me to burn in the kitchen boiler. I saved it and forgot all about until I read of his death.”

The note was written by Louie King who was, in the 1930s, in domestic service for Yvonne Macnamara, mother of Thomas’s wife Caitlin, who gave the instruction to destroy it.

The notebook will be kept in the university’s Richard Burton Archives and will soon be available to view by appointment.