The letter was written about a lack of progress on Under Milk Wood

The poet wrote to BBC producer Douglas Cleverdon, who suggested the idea for the piece, that he was just about to go to America for a reading tour and had done little work on "that mad village play".

The letter, which was expected to fetch up to �2,000, was sold on Thursday evening to a private buyer from the west Midlands.

The letter is dated 18 March, 1953 and Thomas penned it from his home at the Boat House in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

In April, the earliest surviving love letter written by Dylan Thomas to his future wife fetched more than �12,000 pounds at auction in New York.

The poet's letter to Caitlin Macnamara was sold at Sotheby's for nearly four times its estimated value.

The eight-lot collection of Dylan Thomas letters and manuscripts sold for �73,462 ($132,900).

Thursday's sale at Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Swindon also included signed Beatrix Potter and JK Rowling first editions and an album containing photographs of the family of artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and poet Christina Rossetti

Under Milk Wood, subtitled A Play For Voices, was eventually first broadcast on the BBC in January 1954, two months after Thomas' death and was most famously performed by Richard Burton.