UNDER MILK WOOD

A play for voices

Preface and musical settings by Daniel Jones

First edition: 101 pages including 8 pages of musical scores, light brown cloth boards, titled gilt on the spine, price, very good in the dust jacket with the price 8s. 6d. net.

Maud (Ralph) Dylan Thomas in Print: A bibliographical history page 22

Under Milk Wood 25 January 1954

From its famous opening words ("To begin at the beginning…") spoken by the young Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood was a milestone of BBC radio broadcasting, revealing the seething hidden lives of a small Welsh village Llareggub in language that was fresh, exciting and revelatory.

Thomas had worked on-and-off creating the play for nearly 20 years, formulating ideas and characters influenced by his upbringing in Wales, and found the process draining. After a stage run-through in New York in May 1953 he wrote to his wife Caitlin 'I've finished that infernally eternally unfinished "Play" & have done it in New York with actors.'The author never got to hear the BBC Radio premiere with a Welsh cast, which included his friend Richard Burton as the omniscient narrator, nor its subsequent adaptations for stage and screen; Thomas died of alcohol poisoning in New York on 9th November 1953 aged 39. https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/january/under-milk-wood