R. S. Thomas was one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets. For almost fifty years he conducted a significant correspondence with the distinguished poet and critic Raymond Garlick - an exchange that constitutes a unique and compelling cultural dialogue.

R. S. Thomas: Letters to Raymond Garlick, 1951-1999 is a landmark publication: a collection of 152 previously unpublished letters that offer a trenchant, vivid and often humorous commentary on Welsh writing in English, English poetry and Welsh politics. As well as providing fascinating insights into Thomas’s own life and work, the letters include telling observations on the work of other major writers, notably W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes and Geoffrey Hill.

The letters also reveal the creative symbiosis at the heart of his enduring friendship with Raymond Garlick, himself a central figure in the landscape of English-language literature in Wales.

Jason Walford Davies’s introduction and comprehensive annotation ground the correspondence in its cultural and biographical context, and illuminate the significance of what is the only published collection of R.S. Thomas letters in existence