Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

''One afternoon, in a particularly bright and glowing August, some years before I knew I was happy...''

Charming, evocative and imbued with the melancholy of nostalgia, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is Dylan Thomas''s much-loved collection of loosely autobiographical short fiction. First we meet the young schoolboy, gloriously immersed in make-believe in a shabby farmyard; then, the budding poet with his thrilling friendships and dreams of fortune; and finally, ''young Mr Thomas'', the penniless journalist who ''hoped, in a vague way, to live on women''.

Shot through with the exuberance and enthusiasm of youth, these stories reveal Dylan Thomas the poet in an entirely new light, as he explores love, death, religion, adolescent sexuality and fragile male friendships in one of the twentieth century''s finest collections of short fiction.