The award-winning life story of Wales national poet and vicar R.S. Thomas is “a biography touched by genius.” (Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday) R.S. Thomas is widely considered as one of the twentieth-century’s greatest English language poets. His bitter yet beautiful collections on Wales, its landscape, people and identity, reflect a life of political and spiritual asceticism. Indeed, Thomas is a man who banned vacuum cleaners from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, and whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. To Thomas’s many admirers this will be a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry. “A masterpiece.” —Daily Express “A striking, vivid and tender reading of the man . . . Excellent.” —Observer “Riotiously funny.” —Rowan Williams, Sunday Times “It is precisely Byron Rogers’ darkly comic sense of the ridiculous that melts the frost from the head of R.S. Thomas and humanizes a remote and bleakly beautiful writer.” —The Times “A chatty, disorderly but extremely good [biography] . . . A wonderfully comprehensive picture of the man.” —Daily Telegraph “As revealing an account of a severely private person that anyone could hope to achieve.” —Alan Brownjohn, Times Literary Supplement “Engagingly high-spirited and daring.” —Andrew Motion, Guardian Book of the Week “Charming and deftly written. . . . A very funny book.” —Literary Review “As readable and rounded a life of the man as could be written.” —Tablet Winner of the James Tait Black prize for biography

Seven essays from the original 1982 edition, plus seven new ones, analyze the work of Thomas, long considered the leading contemporary poet of Wales, from 1946 to 1990. Includes primary and secondary bibliographies. No index. Available from Dufour Editions, Inc., PO Box 449, Chester Springs, PA 1942

R. S. Thomas is Wales's most eminent poet in the English language, and one of the most acclaimed poets writing in Britain today. Since 1946 he has published twenty-six collections of poetry including his massive Collected Poems in 1993. His poems and books have won many prizes including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1964. Thomas's growing influence on modern poetry has been considerable. This is a result of the poems themselves: Thomas remains a largely private figure, living on the island Anglesey, content to let his writing speak for itself. Thomas's occasional prose writings have consequently been of great importance, providing a glimpse into the craft of his poems and their concerns. Selected Prose is the only book to collect some of his scattered prose in both languages, many Welsh language articles appearing in translation for the first time. It is a varied selection, both creative and critical, aiming to reflect the major preoccupations of Thomas and his poetry: religion and theology; Wales and its topography; Welsh Nationalism and the language; Nature and the countryside; the poet and his craft. It includes also the translated transcript of an autobiographical radio broadcast.

In R.S. Thomas - A Stylistic Biography, Daniel Westover traces Thomas's poetic development over six decades, demonstrating how the complex interior of the poet manifests itself in the continually shifting style of his poems.

At his death in 2000, R. S. Thomas was widely considered to be one of the major poets of the English-speaking world, having been nominated for the Nobel prize for Literature. With Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas is probably Wales's best-known poet internationally.Tony Brown provides an introduction to R. S. Thomas's life and work, as well as new perspectives and insights for those already familiar with the poetry. His approach is broadly chronological, interweaving life and work in order to evaluate Thomas's poetic achievement. In addition to presenting a full discussion of Thomas's poetry, and its movements over time between personal, spiritual and political concerns, Tony Brown also examines Thomas's contribution to the culture of Wales, not just in his writing but also his political interventions and activism on behalf of Welsh language and culture.

R. S. Thomas writes his often dour lines out of the hard landscape of the Welsh hills. His poems are so much a part of that land that farmers and their families, people he calls by name, walk inside them.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Christopher Morgan writes with keen critical insight on the controversial poet R. S. Thomas, considered to be one of the leading writers of the twentieth century. This is the first book to treat Thomas's entire oeuvre and will prove to be an indispensible guide and companion to the complete poems. The book is divided into three parts, each of which interprets the development of a major theme over Thomas's twenty-seven volumes, probing particular themes and particular poems with a meticulous insight. The book also treats Thomas's work as a complex and interrelated whole, as a body of work that comprises a single artistic achievement, and assesses that achievement within the context of an array of major literary figures from Montaigne to Seamus Heaney and Wallace Stevens. R. S. Thomas: Identity, environment, deity proves invaluable as a beginner's introduction to the Welsh poet, as a student's guide to critical thinking about the poet's work, and as a provocative new step in scholarly studies.

Focusing on the significance of place, connection and relationship in three poets who are seldom considered in conjunction, Rory Waterman argues that Philip Larkin, R.S. Thomas and Charles Causley epitomize many of the emotional and societal shifts and mores of their age. Waterman looks at the foundations underpinning their poetry; the attempts of all three to forge a sense of belonging with or separateness from their readers; the poets’ varying responses to their geographical and cultural origins; the belonging and estrangement that inheres in relationships, including marriage; the forced estrangements of war; the antagonism between social belonging and a need for isolation; and, finally, the charged issues of faith and mortality in an increasingly secularized country.

Christopher Morgan writes with keen critical insight on the controversial poet R.S. Thomas, considered to be one of the leading writers of the 20th century. This is the first book to treat Thomas's entire oeuvre and will prove to be an indispensible guide and companion to the complete poems.

Pondering now the being and nature of God, now the mystery of time, now the assault of contemporary lifestyles on the natural world, R.S. Thomas's poetry and prose reflects his Welsh heritage and his determination to be Welsh. Moved by his own personal attractions to the work of Thomas and guided by his careful reading of it, William V. Davis brings us this excellent collection of essays exploring the distinguished yet controversial poet-priest.