A new selection of Dylan Thomas's greatest stories taking us through the landmarks of the year, in an irresistible Little Clothbound Classics edition

For a boy growing up in an ordinary town in Wales, summer is 'always radiant, rainless, lazily rowdy and skyblue', and it always snows at Christmas. Weaving through the course of a year, this selection of Dylan Thomas's most evocative and bittersweet stories depicts silent winter mornings by the sea, glorious holidays in the countryside and lovelorn nights in the pub. It ends with 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', perhaps the most beautiful story of the festive season ever written.

Dylan Thomas was born in 1914 in Swansea, where he worked as a reporter on the local newspaper. He published his first volume of poetry, 18 Poems, when he was just twenty years old. Thereafter, bohemian literary life in London alternated with some more positively creative periods back in Wales. He had a celebrated career as a writer for radio and film, and he continued to publish poetry and short stories. From 1950 onwards, Thomas’ attention was given mainly to completing his most famous work, Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices. The poet died in New York in 1953 and is buried at Laugharne.