18 POEMS by Thomas, Dylan - 1934

London: The Sunday Referee and The Parton Bookshop, 1934. Gilt cloth. Endsheets and fore-edges somewhat foxed, else a nice copy (with spine gilding still bright), in similarly foxed printed dust jacket with two tiny chips and tears at the spine ends and one chip at the lower edge of the rear panel. Half morocco slipcase and chemise. First edition, first state of the binding, of the author's first book. A total of 500 sets of sheets were printed, of which 250 sets were bound up in December of 1934 in this fashion, and the remaining 250 sets of sheets in February, 1936. This copy is signed by Thomas in the upper quadrant of the free endsheet, and has a gift inscription incorporating that signature: "To Ethel from Bert, and Dylan Thomas ... Xmas 1934." "Bert" was Albert Lancaster Lloyd (1908-1982), the prominent British folklorist, singer and Communist activist who, in the late 1930s, was commissioned by the BBC to undertake documentaries on sea-faring life and the rise of Nazism in Germany. He co-edited THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ENGLISH FOLK SONGS (1959) and was a key figure in the folksong revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Laid in is a brief note of presentation, signed "Bert," noting that "Dylan's stuff ... [is] the best young poetry there is; better even than George's [Barker?] or David Gascoyne's. He signed [the book] specially for you." "These first poems (very uneven) shattered for those who discovered them the whole revolutionary optimism of the 'thirties" - Connolly. ROLPH B1a. MODERN MOVEMENT 78a. HAYWARD 343.