The Estate of Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse CBE was born in Cardiff in 1923.  A beloved poet, novelist, playwright, and memoirist, he published sixteen volumes of poetry over the course of his life, which he juggled alongside a career in medicine. 

Dannie was an enthusiast and advocate for literature especially poetry and the people who create it. He reviewed and edited many books and was seminal in the development of Welsh writing in English through his chair of the Welsh Academy and as part of the founding team of the publisher Poetry Press Wales, known as Seren Books. Seren’s first office was housed in the garage of his house at Ogmore-by-Sea. He regularly travelled throughout the UK and internationally to read from his work. He served on many boards and chaired several societies in a long career of engagement and support. He was awarded a CBE for services to poetry and literature in 2012. He died in 2014.

Forthcoming re-issues with Parthian Books in April 2026 include: 

ASK THE MOON, originally published in 2014, is the definitive anthology spanning from 1948-2014 which collects together the jewels of Dannie's poetry canon.

THE PRESENCE, originally published in 2006, is memoir celebrating and mourning his wife, who had died in a traffic accident after a collision on the M4 motorway near Porthcawl in 2005. Dannie had been driving the car at the time. They had been taking part in a poetry reading at the Porthcawl pavilion. 

GOODBYE, TWENTIETH CENTURY, originally published in 2001, incorporates his acclaimed first volume of autobiography, A Poet in the Family, in a new volume which brings his life up to date at the outset of a new century. Abse's rich mixture of Welsh and Jewish backgrounds, and his dual occupations of doctor and author, have led to what is widely regarded as one of the most readable, humorous and poignant autobiographies since the Second World War. 

ASH ON A YOUNG MAN'S SLEEVE, originally published in 1954, is widely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the thirties. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times – unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.