He was born in Cardiff but his father served in the Merchant Navy
and the family moved from place to place before settling at
Holyhead, Ang., in 1918. Educated at the University College of
North Wales, Bangor, where he read Classics, he received his
theological training at St. Michael’s College, Llandaf,
Cardiff. After ordination in 1936 he held two curacies in the
Marches, at Chirk, Denbs. (1936–40), where he met and
married the painter Mildred E. Eldridge, and at Hanmer, Flints.
(1940–42). He became rector of Manafon, Mont., in 1942, and
it was at this time that he began seriously to learn the Welsh
language. At Manafon he wrote nearly all the poems which were
published in his first three volumes, The *Stones of the Field
(1946), An *Acre of Land (1952) and The *Minister (1955), and
later collected in Song at the Year’s Turning (1955). Some
of these early poems, such as ‘Out of the Hills’,
‘A Labourer’, ‘A Peasant’, ‘The Welsh
Hill Country’ and ‘Cynddylan on a Tractor’, show a
developed philosophy of nature and a concern with the geography
and history, as with the farmers and farm-labourers, of the
hill-country. As an epitome of these people he created the
character of the peasant Iago Prytherch, who appears in about
twenty poems written during the period from 1946 to 1970,
developing into a complex persona for the poet, as spokesman,
opponent, friend and even alter ego. R. S. Thomas was alienated
from much of Welsh country life by his status as a priest in the
Church in Wales. He felt the exclusion keenly, saying once that
an Anglicized upbringing like his ‘prevents one from ever
feeling a hundred per cent at home in Welsh Wales’. Partly
to draw closer to Welsh-speaking Wales, he moved in 1954 to
become vicar of Eglwys-fach, Cards., and stayed there until 1967,
although English settlers proved to be more numerous than natives
among his parishioners. To this period belong four volumes of
poems, namely Poetry for Supper (1958), Tares (1961), The Bread
of Truth (1965) and Pietà (1966). The debate with Iago Prytherch
continues, but there are new characters such as Walter Llywarch,
Job Davies and Rhodri Theophilus Owen. Two particular themes
stand out: a deepening concern with the nature of God, in such
poems as ‘The Journey’ and ‘Dialectic’, and
an increasingly powerful Welsh *Nationalism. The volume Tares
contains many patriotic poems, but the most fiercely nationalist
are in The Bread of Truth, especially the final poem,
‘Looking at Sheep’. Pietà, however, moderates the
patriotic ferocity and is characterized by the austere religious
exploration typified by the title-poem with its startling image
of the empty cross. This is the new direction in R. S.
Thomas’s work, which grows increasingly religious but less
and less orthodox. When he became vicar of Aberdaron, Caerns., in
1967, he at last found himself in a community whose primary
language was Welsh. But apart from a grimly light-hearted little
volume, What is a Welshman? (1974), he wrote virtually nothing
further about Wales until Welsh Airs (1987) in which earlier
nationalist work was reprinted alongside fourteen previously
unpublished poems. His poetry is essentially a poetry of search
and once he had found the Wales he had been seeking he did not
need so much to write about it. The volume Not that He Brought
Flowers (1968) is transitional, including both satires such as
‘Welcome to Wales’ and intense meditations like
‘The Priest’, in which he at last makes peace with his
vocation; but the key image comes in ‘Kneeling’, where
the poet kneels before an altar, ‘waiting for the God / To
speak’. This poem is prophetic of the line of development in
H’m (1972), Laboratories of the Spirit (1975), The Way of It
(1977) and Frequencies (1978). The waiting, the search for the
deus absconditus, is typified by the poem ‘Via
Negativa’ which refers to God as ‘that great absence /
In our lives’. In Frequencies he approaches the limits of
Christian orthodoxy and the imagery of all these later volumes is
scientific and technological. Having retired from the priesthood
of the Church in Wales at Easter 1978, R. S. Thomas went to live
at Y Rhiw, near Aberdaron. The first volume of his retirement,
Between Here and Now (1981), is like none of his previous
collections in that half the poems are meditations on
Impressionist paintings in the Louvre; many of the others
continue to ask the question, ‘How far is it to God?’ A
second volume of poems exploring the relationship between
painting and poetry appeared in 1985 under the title Ingrowing
Thoughts. The same year, R. S. Thomas gave public shape to his
personal history in his autobiography Neb, where his life is
depicted as tracing an experiential and geographical parabola,
curving out from Holyhead to the borders of Wales before arcing
back, via Eglwys-fach, to Aberdaron on the furthermost tip of the
Ll}n peninsula. (An interesting chronicle of his life there has
also been published in diary form as Blwyddyn yn Ll}n, 1990.) As
remarkable for its omissions as for its inclusions, Neb is
written throughout in the third person, consistent with the
author’s insistence (registered in the self-deprecating
title Neb/Nobody) on his utter insignificance when measured
against God and his ancient cosmos. The material in the
autobiography (which ranges from tart social comment to intense
lyrical meditations on the amoral beauty of the natural world) is
strikingly recycled in The Echoes Return Slow (1988), a volume
that marked a significant new departure for Thomas into
autobiographical poetry. Also innovative is his construction of a
text by alternating between densely woven prose and sharply
etched poems, usually on identical, or suggestively related,
themes. This volume seems all the more remarkable when compared
with that which preceded it, Experimenting with an Amen (1986), a
collection in which many of the poems seem to testify to the
exhaustion of Thomas’s spiritual preoccupations. However,
the dialectical approach, implicit in the formal structure of The
Echoes Return Slow, produced in his next book, Counterpoint
(1990), a reinvigorated treatment of religious concerns. The
poems are grouped under traditional headings (bc, Incarnation,
Crucifixion, ad) that are, however, interpreted in startlingly
heterodox ways, as Thomas explores his customary themes,
including, most prominently, the malevolence of manipulative
technology (represented by his old adversary ‘the
Machine’). His unsettling view both of traditional Christian
beliefs and practices and of modern secular values is again
powerfully evident in Mass for Hard Times (1992), which is
dedicated to the memory of his first wife, who had died the
previous year. Moving poems recalling her bring a new note of
gentle poignancy not only to this collection but also to No Truce
with the Furies (1995), prompting some reviewers to suggest that
this poet, so long renowned for his harsh suspicion of every
solace, may in old age have become a little more patient of the
claims of love, both human and divine. The book also reflects
important changes in Thomas’s personal circumstances as,
following his wife’s death, he moved from the old cottage in
Ll}n which had featured in several of his finest later poems and
settled, with his second wife, near Holyhead, Ang., where he had
spent his earliest years. Long awaited though Thomas’s
Collected Poems had been, when published in 1993 to celebrate his
eightieth birthday the volume, whose preparation the poet had
entirely entrusted to his son, met with a mixed critical
reception. Many reviewers slighted the religious poetry and
simply disinterred the old clichés about Iago Prytherch and
‘peasant’ Wales. Even sympathetic critics regretted the
omission from the collection not only of several individual
pieces of note but also of a whole body of Thomas’s later
work in which the restless peregrinations of his imagination were
most impressively evident. Nevertheless, new public awareness of
a publishing career spanning more than half a century helped
secure weighty support for Thomas’s nomination for the 1996
Nobel Prize for Literature, which proved unsuccessful. The
occasional prose writings of R. S. Thomas include reviews and
articles in periodicals such as *Wales, Dock Leaves (The
*Anglo-Welsh Review), Y *Fflam and *Baner ac Amserau Cymru, and
more formal meditations on the writer’s art in such printed
lectures as Words and the Poet (1964), Abercuawg (1976), The
Creative Writer’s Suicide (1977) and Undod (1985). He has
also edited the Batsford Book of Country Verse (1961), The
Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963), Edward *Thomas: Selected
Poems (1964), A Choice of George *Herbert’s Verse (1967) and
A Choice of Wordsworth’s Verse (1971). The introductions to
these anthologies are important for an understanding of his own
poetic development. His controversial views on Welsh politics and
culture are given pointed and vigorously polemical expression in
Cymru or Wales? (1992), while ABC Neb (1995) is an intriguing
mélange of personal reflections, arranged in alphabetical order.
A selection of his prose writings has been edited by Sandra
Anstey (1983; revised edn., 1986), and the volume includes some
translations of his Welsh-language essays, most of which have
been collected under the title Pe Medrwn yr Iaith (1988). R. S.
Thomas is undoubtedly the most commanding figure in Welsh
literature since the death of his namesake, Dylan *Thomas, and
although some critics continue to regret his abandonment of
Prytherch, and the changes in his style and subject matter dating
from the early 1970s, others feel that over the last quarter of a
century his writing has deepened in intensity, as he has
fashioned a radically new, God-haunted discourse from unlikely
elements, including outrageous fables, unsettling conceits,
self-cancelling propositions, and imagery drawn from subatomic
physics and cosmological science. In the best of this poetry of
this late period, he repeatedly forces language to reveal its
human limitations even while enabling it to point, almost
despairingly, beyond itself. A full bibliography of writings by
and about R. S. Thomas will be found in A Bibliographical Guide
to Twenty-four Modern Anglo-Welsh Writers (ed. John Harris,
1994). Useful critical discussions of his poetry include the
essay by R. George Thomas in the Writers and their Work series
(1964); the special numbers of Poetry Wales (vol. 7, no. 4, 1972
and vol. 29, no. 1, 1993) and The New Welsh Review (no. 5, vol.
4, Spring 1993); the essay by W. Moelwyn Merchant in the Writers
of Wales series (1979; reissued 1989); Critical Writings on R. S.
Thomas (ed. Sandra Anstey, 1982, revised and expanded 1992); A.
E. Dyson, Riding the Echo: Yeats, Eliot and R. S. Thomas (1981);
the collections of critical essays, Y Cawr Awenydd (ed. M. Wynn
Thomas, 1990), The Page’s Drift: R. S. Thomas at Eighty (ed.
M. Wynn Thomas, 1993) and Miraculous Simplicity (ed. William V.
Davis, 1993); discussions of his religious poetry in D. Z.
Phillips, Through a Darkening Glass (1982), the same
author’s R. S. Thomas, Poet of the Hidden God (1986), M. J.
J. van Buuren, Waiting: the religious poetry of Ronald Stuart
Thomas (1993), Elaine Shepherd, R. S. Thomas: Conceding an
Absence (1996) and Justin Wintle, Furious Interiors (1996). See
also Jason Walford Davies, ‘Allusions to Welsh Literature in
the Writing of R. S. Thomas’, in Welsh Writing in English
(vol. 1, ed. Tony Brown, 1995) and Autobiographies (ed. Jason
Walford Davies, 1997), a selection of the poet’s
autobiographical writings in translation.
Extract from The New Companion to the Literature of Wales (Cardiff, 1998) compiled and edited by Meic Stephens, reproduced by kind permission of the University of Wales Press.
Atgynhyrchwyd o Cydymaith i Lenyddiaeth Cymru (Caerdydd, 1997) golygwyd gan Meic Stephens, gyda chaniatâd caredig Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru.
Fe’i ganed yng Nghaerdydd ond gwasanaethai ei dad ar y
llongau masnach a symudodd y teulu o fan i fan nes ymsefydlu yng
Nghaergybi, Môn, yn 1918. Aeth i Goleg Prifysgol Gogledd Cymru,
Bangor, lle’r astudiodd y Clasuron, a derbyniodd ei
hyfforddiant diwinyddol yng Ngholeg Sant Mihangel, Llandaf,
Caerdydd. Wedi’i ordeinio yn 1936, gwasanaethodd mewn dwy
guradiaeth ar y Gororau, yn Y Waun, Dinb. (1936–40), lle y
cyfarfu â’r arlunydd Mildred E. Eldridge a’i phriodi,
ac yn Hanmer, Ffl. (1940–42). Daeth yn rheithor Manafon,
Tfn, yn 1942 a dyna pryd yr aeth ati o ddifrif i ddysgu’r
Gymraeg. Ym Manafon yr ysgrifennodd bron pob un o’r cerddi a
gyhoeddwyd yn ei dair cyfrol gyntaf, The *Stones of the Field
(1946), An *Acre of Land (1952) a The *Minister (1953), cyfrolau
a gasglwyd ynghyd yn ddiweddarach yn Song at the Year’s
Turning (1955). Y mae rhai o’r cerddi cynnar hyn, megis
‘Out of the Hills’, ‘A Labourer’, ‘A
Peasant’, ‘The Welsh Hill Country’ a
‘Cynddylan on a Tractor’, yn amlygu ei ddiddordeb ym
myd natur, yn naearyddiaeth a hanes Cymru, ac yn ffermwyr a
gweision-fferm y mynydd-dir. Creodd y cymeriad Iago Prydderch fel
distylliad o nodweddion y bobl hyn ac ymddengys mewn rhyw ugain o
gerddi a ysgrifennwyd yn y cyfnod o 1946 hyd 1970, gan
ddatblygu’n persona cymhleth dros y bardd, fel llefarydd,
gwrthwynebydd, cyfaill a hyd yn oed alter ego. Yr oedd R. S.
Thomas wedi’i ddieithrio oddi wrth lawer o agweddau ar fywyd
gwledig Cymru gan ei statws fel offeiriad yn yr Eglwys yng
Nghymru a theimla’r gwahanu hwn i’r byw. Yn rhannol er
mwyn symud yn nes at y Gymru Gymraeg, derbyniodd ficeriaeth
Eglwys-fach, Cer., yn 1954, ac er iddo ganfod mwy o Saesneg na
Chymraeg yn y plwyf arhosodd yno hyd 1967. Perthyn pedair cyfrol
o gerddi i’r cyfnod hwn, Poetry for Supper (1958), Tares
(1961), The Bread of Truth (1963) a Pietà (1966). Y mae’r
ymgom ag Iago Prydderch yn mynd yn ei blaen, ond bellach ceir
cymeriadau megis Walter Llywarch, Job Davies a Rhodri Theophilus
Owen. Y mae dwy thema arbennig yn eu hamlygu eu hunain: diddordeb
cynyddol yn natur Duw, mewn cerddi megis ‘The Journey’
a ‘Dialectic’, a *Chenedlaetholdeb Cymreig sy’n
mynd yn fwyfwy chwerw. Y mae’r gyfrol Tares yn cynnwys
llawer o gerddi gwladgarol, ond y mae’r rhai mwyaf ffyrnig
genedlgarol i’w cael yn The Bread of Truth, yn enwedig yn y
gerdd olaf, ‘Looking at Sheep’. Y mae’r
brwdfrydedd cenedlaethol wedi’i dymheru yn Pietà, fodd
bynnag, a nodweddir y gyfrol hon gan yr archwilio crefyddol llym
a gorfforir yn y gerdd-deitl gyda’i delwedd drawiadol
o’r groes wag. Dyma’r cyfeiriad newydd yng ngwaith R.
S. Thomas, sy’n tyfu yn fwyfwy crefyddol ond yn llai
uniongred. Pan aeth yn ficer Aberdaron, Caern., yn 1967,
fe’i cafodd ei hun o’r diwedd mewn cymuned a’r
Gymraeg yn brif iaith iddi. Ond ar wahân i gyfrol fach o gerddi
ysgafn, What is a Welshman? (1974), ychydig iawn a ysgrifennodd
am Gymru wedyn, nes i Welsh Airs ymddangos (1987): yn y gyfrol
hon ailargraffwyd ei gerddi cenedlaetholaidd cynnar ochr yn ochr
â phedair ar ddeg o rai newydd. Barddoniaeth ymchwil sydd ganddo
yn y bôn, ac unwaith y canfu’r Gymru y bu’n chwilio
amdani nid oedd angen ysgrifennu cymaint amdani. Cyfrol ar newid
yw Not that He Brought Flowers (1968); y mae’n cynnwys
cerddi dychan megis ‘Welcome to Wales’, ynghyd â
myfyrdodau dwys megis ‘The Priest’, lle y gwna gymod
o’r diwedd â’i alwedigaeth, ond daw’r ddelwedd
allweddol yn ‘Kneeling’ lle y mae’r bardd yn ei
ddisgrifio’i hun yn penlinio o flaen allor, ‘Waiting
for the God/To speak’. Y mae hyn yn rhag-weld cwrs ei
ddatblygiad yn H’m (1972), Laboratories of the Spirit
(1975), The Way of It (1977) a Frequencies (1978). Nodweddir yr
aros, yr ymchwil am y deus absconditus, gan y gerdd ‘Via
Negativa’ sy’n dechrau ‘Why no! I never thought
other than/That God is that great absence/In our lives’. Yn
Frequencies daw yn agos at derfynau uniongrededd Gristnogol, ac y
mae delweddaeth pob un o’r cyfrolau diweddar hyn wedi’i
gwreiddio’n ddwfn mewn gwyddoniaeth a thechnoleg. Ymddeolodd
R. S. Thomas o weinidogaeth yr Eglwys yng Nghymru adeg y Pasg
1978, ac aeth i fyw i’r Rhiw ger Aberdaron. Nid yw cyfrol
gyntaf ei ymddeoliad, Between Here and Now (1981), yn debyg i un
o’i gyfrolau blaenorol gan fod hanner y cerddi yn fyfyrdodau
ar ddarluniau’r Argraffiadwyr yn y Louvre; y mae llawer
o’r lleill yn parhau i ofyn ‘pa mor bell yw hi at
Dduw?’ Cyhoeddodd gyfrol arall o gerddi yn archwilio’r
berthynas rhwng arlunio a barddoniaeth dan y teitl Ingrowing
Thoughts yn 1985. Yr un flwyddyn, cyflwynodd R. S. Thomas y wedd
gyhoeddus ar ei hanes yn Neb, hunangofiant ar ffurf parabola, gan
ei fod yn olrhain cwrs ei fywyd o’i ddyddiau cynnar yng
Nghaergybi, ymaith i’r gororau, ac yna’n ôl, heibio i
Eglwys-fach, i Aberdaron yn mhen draw Pen Ll}n. (Ceir cofnod
diddorol, ar ffurf dyddiadur, o’i ddyddiau yno yn Blwyddyn
yn Ll}n, 1990.) Un o nodweddion hynotaf Neb yw ei fod wedi ei
ysgrifennu yn y trydydd person, yn rhannol i arwyddo cred yr
awdur nad yw ef yn ddim o feddwl am fawredd Duw ac oed hynafol y
Cread. Hynodrwydd arall yr hunangofiant yw’r deunydd sydd
wedi ei hepgor ganddo, ac eto ceir amrywiaeth cyfoethog o
ysgrifennu, sy’n cynnwys sylwadau brathog ar y gymdeithas yn
ogystal â myfyrdodau telynegol, dwys, ar harddwch di-foesoldeb
byd natur. Ailgylchir peth o’r defnyddiau hyn yn The Echoes
Return Slow (1988), cyfrol sy’n anarferol am fod
barddoniaeth a rhyddiaith yn cael eu cyfochri’n awgrymog
iawn ynddi, ac am nad yw’n ymwneud â dim ond rhawd bersonol
y bardd. Ymddengys y gyfrol yn fwy anarferol byth, o’i
chymharu ag Experimenting with an Amen (1986), a ddaeth o’i
blaen, gan fod awgrym yn honno y gallai fod R. S. Thomas wedi
chwythu’i blwc fel bardd crefyddol. Ond drwy
fabwysiadu’r dull dilechdidol o lunio testun a arferwyd
ganddo yn The Echoes Return Slow, llwyddodd i ailfywiogi ei awen
ysbrydol yn ei lyfr nesaf, Counterpoint (1990). Er bod cynnwys
hwnnw wedi’i drefnu dan bennau traddodiadol (BC, Yr
Ymgnawdoliad, y Croeshoeliad, AD), dehonglir y testunau hyn mewn
ffyrdd go anuniongred, wrth i’r bardd ddychwelyd at ei hoff
themâu, gan gynnwys mileindra technoleg ystrywgar (a
gynrychiolir gan hen elyn R. S. Thomas: y peiriant). Y mae ei
farn heriol am gredoau traddodiadol y ffydd Gristnogol ac am
werthoedd a gweithredoedd y byd modern secwlar yn amlwg eto fyth
yn Mass for Hard Times (1992), y gyfrol rymus a gysegrwyd er cof
am ei wraig, a gladdwyd y flwyddyn flaenorol. Ychwanega’r
cerddi teimladwy sy’n ymwneud â hi dinc rhyw dynerwch
newydd at ei farddoniaeth, ac wrth glywed adlais arall ohono yn
No Truce with the Furies (1995) awgrymodd ambell adolygydd
efallai fod y bardd hwn, a fuasai’n enwog cyhyd am ei
ddrwgdybiaeth lem o bob cysur, ychydig bach yn barotach, yn ei
hen ddyddiau, i gydnabod dilysrwydd cariad dynol a chariad
dwyf-ol. Ymhellach, adlewyrcha No Truce with the Furies
newidiadau pwysig yn amgylchiadau personol R. S. Thomas, gan iddo
adael, ar ôl i’w wraig farw, yr hen fwthyn yn Ll}n y
cyfeiriwyd droeon ato yn ei gerddi, ac ymgartrefu, gyda chymar
newydd, nid nepell o Gaergybi, bro ei febyd. Er y buasai disgwyl
am yn hir am Collected Poems R. S. Thomas, pan gyhoeddwyd y
casgliad (a olygwyd gan ei fab) i gyd-daro â phen blwydd y bardd
yn bedwar ugain oed, ymateb digon cymysg a gafwyd. Anwybyddwyd y
cerddi crefyddol gan nifer o adolygwyr yr oedd yn well ganddynt
ailadrodd yr hen ystrydebau treuliedig am y ‘gwerinwr’
tybiedig, Iago Prytherch. Gresynai hyd yn oed y beirniaid mwyaf
cydymdeimladol fod sawl cerdd unigol o bwys wedi ei gollwng
o’r llyfr, ac na chynhwyswyd dim o ddeunydd y cyfrolau
diweddar lle yr oedd pererindota dychymyg anesmwyth y bardd
i’w ganfod ar ei orau. Serch hynny, sicrhaodd Collected
Poems fod sylw newydd yn cael ei roi i yrfa a rychwantai hanner
canrif, ac yn sgîl hynny enwebwyd R. S. Thomas ar gyfer Gwobr
Lên Nobel yn 1996; yr oedd y cais yn aflwyddiannus. Y mae
rhyddiaith achlysurol R. S. Thomas yn cynnwys adolygiadau ac
erthyglau mewn cylchgronau megis *Wales, Dock Leaves (The
*Anglo-Welsh Review), Y *Fflam, a *Baner ac Amserau Cymru, a
hefyd myfyrdodau cyhoeddus mwy ffurfiol ar grefft y llenor megis
yn Words and the Poet (1984), Abercuawg (1976), The Creative
Writer’s Suicide (1977) ac Undod (1985). Yn ogystal, y mae
wedi golygu’r flodeugerdd The Batsford Book of Country Verse
(1961), The Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963), Edward
*Thomas: Selected Poems (1964), A Choice of George
*Herbert’s Verse (1967) ac A Choice of Wordsworth’s
Verse (1971). Y mae ei rageiriau i’r blodeugerddi hyn yn
bwysig er mwyn deall ei ddatblygiad barddonol ef ei hun. Rhydd
fynegiant miniog a grymus i’w farn ddadleuol am
wleidyddiaeth a diwylliant Cymru yn Cymru or Wales? (1992), ac y
mae ABC Neb (1995) yn gymysgfa ddiddorol o fyfyrdodau personol
wedi eu gosod yn nhrefn yr wyddor. Yn 1983 golygwyd detholiad o
ysgrifau R. S. Thomas, gan gynnwys cyfieithiadau o rai o’r
ysgrifau Cymraeg a gasglwyd yn ddiweddarach yn y gyfrol Pe Medrwn
yr Iaith (1988). Yn ddi-os, R. S. Thomas yw’r ffigur mwyaf
awdurdodol yn llên Cymru er cyfnod Dylan *Thomas, ac er bod rhai
beirniaid yn dal i weld eisiau Iago Prytherch ac yn methu derbyn
y newid arddull a thestun a welwyd yng ngwaith y bardd er y
1970au, cred beirniaid eraill fod ei ysgrifennu wedi dyfnhau ac
wedi dwysáu yn ystod y degawdau diwethaf, wrth iddo gymathu
elfennau annisgwyl er mwyn creu ieithwedd newydd, radical,
grefyddgar sy’n cyfuno ffablau rhyfygus, consetiau
cythryblus, gosodiadau sy’n eu tanseilio eu hunain, a
delweddau wedi eu cywain o fyd ffiseg isatomig a gwyddoniaeth
gosmolegol. Yng ngherddi gorau y cyfnod diweddar hyn y mae R. S.
Thomas yn gorfodi iaith i ddatgelu ei hannigonolrwydd dynol
tra’i fod ar yr un gwynt yn ei galluogi hi, yn ei hanobaith,
i ymgyrraedd bron y tu hwnt i’w gallu. Ceir llyfryddiaeth
gyflawn o ysgrifeniadau gan R. S. Thomas ac amdano yn A
Bibliographical Guide to Twenty-Four Modern Anglo-Welsh Writers
(gol. John Harris, 1994). Ymhlith y trafodaethau beirniadol
defnyddiol o’i waith ceir traethawd R. George Thomas yn y
gyfres Writers and their Work (1964); rhifynnau arbennig o Poetry
Wales (cyf. VII, rhif. 4, 1972 a chyf. XXIX, rhif. 1, 1993) a The
New Welsh Review (rhif. 5, cyf. IV, Gwanwyn 1993); ysgrif W.
Moelwyn Merchant yng nghyfres Writers of Wales (1979); Critical
Writings on R. S. Thomas (gol. Sandra Anstey, 1982; adolygwyd a
helaethwyd, 1992); A. E. Dyson, Riding the Echo: Yeats, Eliot and
R. S. Thomas (1981); casgliadau o ysgrifau beirniadol, Y Cawr
Awenydd (gol. M. Wynn Thomas, 1990), The Page’s Drift: R. S.
Thomas at Eighty (gol. M. Wynn Thomas, 1993) a Miraculous
Simplicity (gol. William V. Davis, 1993); astudiaethau o’i
gerddi crefyddol yn D. Z. Phillips, Through a Darkening Glass
(1982), y gyfrol R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God (1986) gan
yr un awdur, M. J. J. van Buuren, Waiting: the Religious Poetry
of Ronald Stuart Thomas (1993), Elaine Shepherd, R. S. Thomas:
Conceding an Absence (1996) a Justin Wintle, Furious Interiors
(1996). Gweler hefyd Jason Walford Davies, ‘Allusions to
Welsh Literature in the Writing of R. S. Thomas’, yn Welsh
Writing in English (cyf. I, gol. Tony Brown, 1995) ac
Autobiographies (1997), detholiad o ysgrifeniadau hunangofiannol
R. S. Thomas wedi eu cyfieithu i’r Saesneg.