Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Contents
1 Life and career
1.1 Early life
1.2 19331939
1.3 Wartime, 19391945
1.4 Broadcasting years 19451949
1.5 American tours, 19501953
1.6 Death
1.7 Aftermath
2 Poetry
2.1 Poetic style and influences
2.2 As a 'Welsh' poet
3 Critical reception
4 Memorials
5 List of works
5.1 Posthumous film adaptations
5.2 Opera adaptation
6 See also
7 Footnotes
7.1 Notes
7.2 References
7.3 Bibliography
8 Further reading
9 External links
Dylan Thomas was born on 27 October 1914 in Swansea, the son of Florence
Hannah (ne Williams; 18821958), a seamstress, and David John Thomas
(18761952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English
from University College, Aberystwyth and ambitions to rise above his position
teaching English literature at the local grammar school.[4] Thomas had one
sibling, Nancy Marles (19061953), who was eight years his senior.[5] The
children spoke only English, though their parents were bilingual in English and
Welsh, and David Thomas gave Welsh lessons at home. Thomas's father chose
the name Dylan, which could be translated as "son of the sea", after Dylan ail
Don, a character in The Mabinogion.[6] His middle name, Marlais, was given in
honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet
whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.[5][7] Dylan, pronounced [dlan]
(Dull-an) in Welsh, caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the
5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea,
birthplace of Dylan Thomas
"dull one".[8] When he broadcast on Welsh BBC, early in his career, he was
introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised
pronunciation and gave instructions that it should be Dillan /dln/.[5][9]
The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which
Thomas was born and lived until he was 19, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.[7]
His childhood was spent in Swansea, with summer trips to Carmarthenshire to visit Fernhill, a dairy farm
owned by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones,[10] the memory of which is used for the 1945 lyrical poem "Fern
Hill".[11] Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood and struggled with these throughout his life. Thomas
was indulged by his mother and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, and he was
skilful in gaining attention and sympathy.[12] Thomas' formal education began at Mrs Hole's dame school, a
private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home.[13] He described his experience there in
Quite Early One Morning:
Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the
sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely
schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little
crime the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during
English literature.[14]
In his free time, he joined the amateur dramatic group at the Little Theatre in Mumbles, visited the cinema in
Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the
Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles.[23][24] In the Kardomah Caf, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he
met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins. The group of writers, musicians
and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang".[25] In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first
time.[nb 1]
19331939
Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published: "And death
shall have no dominion", "Before I Knocked" and "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the
Flower". "And death shall have no dominion" appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933.[5] When
"Light breaks where no sun shines" appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior
figures in literary London, T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender.[7][27][28] They contacted
Thomas and his first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published in December 1934. 18 Poems was noted for its
visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that the work was "the sort of bomb that
bursts no more than once in three years".[5][29] The volume was critically acclaimed and won a contest run by
the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and
Edwin Muir.[7] The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its
writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by
other new authors including Philip Larkin.[30] In September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning
a lifelong friendship.[31] Thomas introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends, now
known as The Kardomah Gang. In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom
Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring
Thomas back for supper with his aunt. On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its
top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his
life, an example of her coddling him.[32] Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for
him.[33][34] In December 1935 Thomas contributed the poem "The Hand That Signed the Paper" to Issue 18 of
the bi-monthly New Verse.[35] In 1936, his next collection Twenty-five Poems, published by J. M. Dent, also
received much critical praise.[7] In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before
moving to London. It was the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.[29][36]
In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (19131994), a 22-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed dancer of
Irish descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and aged 18 joined the chorus
line at the London Palladium.[37][38][39] Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The
Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End.[37][39][40] Laying his head in her lap, a drunken
Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End.[37][39][40] Laying his head in her lap, a drunken
Thomas proposed.[38][41] Thomas liked to comment that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after
they first met.[42] Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with John, she and Thomas began a
correspondence, and in the second half of 1936 were courting.[43] They married at the register office in
Penzance, Cornwall, on 11 July 1937.[44] In early 1938 they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of
Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.[45] Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on 30 January 1939.[46]
By the late 1930s, Thomas was embraced as the "poetic herald" for a group of English poets, the New
Apocalyptics.[47] Thomas refused to align himself with them and declined to sign their manifesto. He later
stated that he believed they were "intellectual muckpots leaning on a theory".[47] Despite this, many of the
group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas.[47]
Wartime, 19391945
In 1939 The Map of Love appeared as a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by
Thomas in magazines since 1934.[48] Ten stories in his next book, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940),
were based less on lavish fantasy than The Map of Love and more on real-life romances featuring himself in
Wales.[5] Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and
reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances.[49] Hounded by creditors, Thomas
and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield,
Gloucestershire.[nb 2] There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire The Death of the King's Canary,
though due to fears of libel the work was not published until 1976.[51][52]
At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as
"an unreliable lung". Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and
mucus.[53] After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III,
which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service.[nb 3] Saddened to see his friends going
on active service, he continued drinking and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to
random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income.[5]
Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings
but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.[55]
In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a "three nights' blitz". Castle Street was one of
many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Caf, were destroyed. Thomas walked
through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded:
"Our Swansea is dead".[56] Soon after the bombing raids, Thomas wrote a radio play, Return Journey Home,
which described the caf as being "razed to the snow".[57] The play was first broadcast on 15 June 1947. The
Kardomah Caf reopened on Portland Street after the war.[58]
In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin moved to London, leaving their son with his grandmother at Blashford in
Hampshire.[59] Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry and wrote to the director of the films
division of the Ministry of Information (MOI).[5] After being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films,
providing him with his first regular income since the Daily Post.[60] Strand produced films for the MOI;
Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942, This Is Colour (a history of the British dyeing industry) and New
Towns For Old (on post-war reconstruction). These Are The Men (1943) was a more ambitious piece in which
Thomas's verse accompanies Leni Riefenstahl's footage of an early Nuremberg Rally.[nb 4] Conquest of a Germ
(1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis. Our Country
(1945) was a romantic tour of Britain set to Thomas's poetry.[62][63]
In early 1943 Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower, one of several affairs he had during his
marriage.[64] The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity.[64] In
March 1943 Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London.[64] They lived in a run-down studio in
Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.[65]
In 1944, with the threat of German flying bombs on London, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaen
Cwm near Llangain,[66] where Thomas resumed writing poetry, completing "Holy Spring" and "Vision and
Prayer".[67] In September Thomas and Caitlin moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), which
inspired Thomas to pen the radio piece Quite Early One Morning, a sketch for his later work, Under Milk
Wood.[68] Of the poetry written at this time, of note is "Fern Hill", believed to have been started while living in
New Quay, but completed at Blaen Cwm in mid-1945.[69][nb 5]
Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor
and intermittent source of income. In 1943 he wrote and recorded a 15-
minute talk entitled "Reminiscences of Childhood" for the Welsh BBC.
In December 1944 he recorded Quite Early One Morning (produced by
Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC) but when Davies
offered it for national broadcast BBC London turned it down.[68] On 31
August 1945 the BBC Home Service broadcast Quite Early One
Morning, and in the three years beginning October 1945, Thomas made
over a hundred broadcasts for the corporation.[70] Thomas was
employed not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and The Boat House, Laugharne, the Thomas
critiques.[71][72] family home from 1949
In the second half of 1945, Thomas began reading for the BBC Radio
programme, Book of Verse, broadcast weekly to the Far East.[75] This provided
Thomas with a regular income and brought him into contact with Louis
MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas
cherished.[76] On 29 September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third
Programme, a high-culture network which provided opportunities for
Thomas.[77] He appeared in the play Comus for the Third Programme, the day
Thomas's 5 writing shed in
after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts,
Laugharne, Carmarthenshire
including the lead in Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Satan in an adaptation of
Paradise Lost.[76][78] Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for
the BBC, who regarded him as "useful should a younger generation poet be
needed". [79] He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management and a staff job was never an option, with
drinking cited as the problem.[80] Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and within Britain was
"in every sense a celebrity".[81]
Thomas visited the home of historian A. J. P. Taylor in Disley. Although Taylor disliked him intensely, he
stayed for a month, drinking "on a monumental scale", up to 15 or 20 pints of beer a day. In late 1946 Thomas
turned up at the Taylors' again, this time homeless and with Caitlin. Margaret Taylor let them take up residence
in the garden summerhouse.[82] In May 1949 Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House
at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of 2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor.[83] Thomas acquired a
garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he
wrote several of his most acclaimed poems.[84] Just before moving into there, Thomas rented "Pelican House"
opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents[85][86] who lived there from 1949 until 1953. It
was there that his father died and the funeral was held.[87] Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named
Colm Garan Hart, on 25 July 1949.[88]
Despite a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged
Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable
literary figures including the likes of T. S. Eliot.[99] Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the
United States, and thought that if Thomas had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady
work there.[100] She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and
Caitlin lived in the basement flat.[101] Thomas would describe the flat as his "London house of horror" and did
not return there after his 1952 tour of America.[102]
Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin after she had discovered
he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip.[103] They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and
lung problems. The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements.[104] The trip also
resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that
year.[105] One of his works recorded during this time, A Child's Christmas in Wales, became his most popular
prose work in America.[69] The original 1952 recording of A Child's Christmas in Wales was a 2008 selection
for the United States National Recording Registry, stating that it is "credited with launching the audiobook
industry in the United States".[106]
In April 1953 Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America.[107] He performed a "work in progress"
version of Under Milk Wood, solo, for the first time at Harvard University on 3 May.[108] A week later the work
was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York. He met the deadline only after being locked in
a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance;
its last lines were handed to the actors as they put on their makeup.[109][110] In the wake of the play's US
success, the composer Stravinsky invited Thomas to write a libretto for an opera.[110] Thomas spent the last
nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an
affair.[111] During this time Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's
doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster and treated him for gout and gastritis.[111]
After returning home, Thomas worked on Under Milk Wood in Wales before sending the original manuscript to
Douglas Cleverdon on 15 October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London
and required a duplicate to take to America.[112][113] Thomas flew to the States on 19 October 1953 for what
would be his final tour.[112] He died in New York before the BBC could record "Under Milk Wood".[114][115]
Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent
film.[116] In 1954 the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.[nb 7]
Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 19341952, published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry
prize.[118] Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that "Thomas is the greatest living poet in the
English language".[110] Thomas's father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few
months of 1953 his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three
friends died at an early age and Caitlin had an abortion.[119]
Death
Plans called for a first appearance at a rehearsal of Under Milk Wood at the
Thomas's grave at the
Poetry Centre. Brinnin, who was director of the Poetry Centre, did not travel to
churchyard in Laugharne, in
New York but remained in Boston to write.[124] He handed responsibility to his
2011
assistant, Liz Reitell, who was keen to see Thomas for the first time since their
three-week romance early in the year. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and
was shocked at his appearance, as he "looked
pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust
self".[122] Thomas told her he had had a And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
terrible week, had missed her terribly and With the man in the wind and the west moon;
wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Reitell's When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones
previous misgivings about their relationship, gone,
they spent the rest of the day and night They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
together. After being taken by Reitell to Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took Though lovers be lost love shall not;
the first rehearsal of Under Milk Wood. They And death shall have no dominion.
then went to the White Horse Tavern in
Greenwich Village, before returning to the From "And death shall have no dominion"
Twenty-five Poems (1936)
Chelsea Hotel.[125]
The next day Reitell invited him to her apartment, but he declined. They went sight-seeing, but Thomas felt
unwell and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of
phenobarbitone to help him sleep and spent the night at the hotel with him. Two days later, on 23 October, Herb
Hannum, a friend from an earlier trip, noticed how sick Thomas looked and suggested an appointment with
Feltenstein before the performances of Under Milk Wood that evening. Feltenstein administered injections and
Thomas made it through the two performances, but collapsed immediately afterwards.[126] Reitell later said
that Feltenstein was "rather a wild doctor who thought injections would cure anything".[127]
On the evening of 27 October Thomas attended his 39th birthday party
but felt unwell and returned to his hotel after an hour.[128] The next day
he took part in Poetry and the Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema
16, with panellists Amos Vogel, Arthur Miller, Maya Deren, Parker
Tyler, and Willard Maas.[128][129]
Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his
medical notes state that the "impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the
brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response".[135] Caitlin flew to America the
following day and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported
first words were, "Is the bloody man dead yet?"[135] She was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the
morning[136] but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill Brinnin. When she became
uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private
psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.[137]
Aftermath
Dylan's legacy as the "doomed poet" was cemented with the publication
of Brinnin's 1955 biography Dylan Thomas in America, which focuses
Dylan Thomas's writing shed in
on his last few years and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a
Laugharne, largely untouched since his
philanderer.[139] Later biographies are critical of Brinnin's view, death
especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in Fatal
Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? claims that Brinnin, along with
Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable.[124] FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and
skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise. Ferris in his 1989
biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days and does
not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death. Feltenstein's role and actions have been criticised by
many sources, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he
administered.[140] Dr B. W. Murphy and Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctors who treated Thomas
while at St. Vincents, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him
admitted to hospital sooner, "was even more culpable than his use of morphine".[141]
Following his death, Thomas's body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at
Laugharne.[142] Thomas's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne
on 24 November. Thomas's coffin was carried by six friends from the village.[143] Caitlin, without her
customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by
her side.[144][145] The procession to the church was filmed and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel.[144][146]
Thomas's obituary in The Times was written by fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins.[147]
His widow, Caitlin, died in 1994 and was buried alongside him.[40] Thomas's father "DJ" died on 16 December
1952 and his mother Florence in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter,
Aeronwy in 2009 and his youngest son Colm in 2012.[142][148][149]
Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, Caitlin Thomas Leftover Life to Kill (1957) and My Life with Dylan
Thomas: Double Drink Story (1997), describe the destructive effect of alcoholism on the poet and to their
relationship. "But ours was a drink story, not a love story, just like millions of others. Our one and only true
love was drink", she wrote[150] and "The bar was our altar".[151] Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the
demise of Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his
extramarital affairs.[152] Thomas died intestate with assets to the value of 100.[153]
Poetry
Poetic style and influences
Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to
categorize.[139] Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movement he refused to follow
its creed.[139] Instead Thomas is viewed as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though
attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful.[139] Elder Olson,
in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote "... a further characteristic which distinguished Thomas's
work from that of other poets. It was unclassifiable." Olson continued that in a postmodern age that continually
attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his
work was so obscure that critics could not explicate it.[154]
Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle "Do not go gentle into that
good night". His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of
all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw biology as
a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate
this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new
life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-
contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud.[155] Explaining the source
of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones: "My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one,
based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived (I'm afraid all this sounds wooly and pretentious) from the
cosmic significance of the human anatomy".[139]
Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H.
Lawrence. William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas, finds comparison
between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the
works of Lawrence and Thomas.[159][nb 11] Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of
Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by poet Roy
Campbell.[160][161][nb 12] Critics have explored the connection between the creation of Thomas's mythological
pasts into his works such as "The Orchards", which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of
the Mabinogion.[113][162][nb 13] Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality,[163] most clear in "Fern Hill", "In
Country Sleep", "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" and "In the White Giant's Thigh" from Under Milk Wood.
Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his
parents taught him when he was a child:
I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The
first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to
love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary
importance ... I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the
mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can
influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to
enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and,
later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to
me, that could be ever.[164]
Thomas was an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Dog (1940) and Quite Early One Morning (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories.[3]
His first published prose work was After the Fair, printed in The New English Weekly on 15 March 1934.[165]
Jacob Korg believes that Thomas's fiction work can be classified into two main bodies, vigorous fantasies in a
poetic style and, after 1939, more straightforward narratives.[166] Korg surmises that Thomas approached his
prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do
not allow the reader to rest.[166]
As a 'Welsh' poet
Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early
radio talks, believed that the poet's "whole attitude is that of the medieval bards." Kenneth O. Morgan counter-
argues that it is a 'difficult enterprise' to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod
(tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry.[171] Instead he believes his work, especially his earlier more
autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the
Anglicisation of the new industrial nation: "rural and urban, chapel-going and profane, Welsh and English,
Unforgiving and deeply compassionate."[171] Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of
cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt Thomas consciously employed one element of
Welsh metrics; that of counting syllables per line instead of feet.[nb 14] Constantine Fitzgibbon, Thomas's first
in-depth biographer, wrote "No major English poet has ever been as Welsh as Dylan".[173]
Although Thomas had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote, "Land of
my fathers, and my fathers can keep it".[174][175] While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually
comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British
melodrama The Three Weird Sisters. Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled "I only once heard Dylan
express an opinion on Welsh Nationalism. He used three words. Two of them were Welsh Nationalism."[174]
Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later
years as he had not 'rejected enough' of the elements that Thomas disliked "Welsh nationalism and a sort of
hill farm morality".[176] Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of literary magazine Wales,
Thomas's father wrote that he was "afraid Dylan isn't much of a Welshman".[174] Though FitzGibbon asserts
that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh
language.[177]
Critical reception
Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical
studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in
New York. When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet he opened by addressing the assembly,
"Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry", querying how 'Thomas the
Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes.[178] David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated
in his 1962 publication Llareggub Revisited, "the strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's notoriety-not that he is
bogus, but that attitudes to poetry attached themselves to him which not only threaten the prestige, effectiveness
and accessibility to English poetry, but also destroyed his true voice and, at last, him."[179] The Poetry Archive
notes that "Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him of being drunk on language as well as whiskey, but whilst
there's no doubt that the sound of language is central to his style, he was also a disciplined writer who re-
drafted obsessively".[180]
Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow and that he suffers from verbal extravagance.[181]
Those that have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947,
"Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the English disputes about Dylan Thomas's greatness ... He is a
dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding."[182] Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading
Eighteen Poems, "The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow
with one small book as Swinburne had with Poems and Ballads."[183] Philip Larkin in a letter to Kingsley
Amis in 1948, wrote that "no one can 'stick words into us like pins'... like he [Thomas] can", but followed that
by stating that he "doesn't use his words to any advantage".[182] Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in
his work, and claiming that he was 'frothing at the mouth with piss.'[184] In 1956, the publication of the
anthology New Lines featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and
Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940s.
Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated "Dylan
Thomas was made to stand for everything they detest, verbal obscurity, metaphysical pretentiousness, and
romantic rhapsodizing".[185]
Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of
his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public.[181] In
2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th.[186]
Several of his poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors,
musicians and film and television writers.[181] The BBC Radio programme, Desert Island Discs, in which
guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording.[187]
John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar
and common.[188] He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960s when Thomas was considered a
cultural icon, that the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work,
and his refusal to know his place. Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970s and
has become "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism"[188] his work failing to fit standard
narratives and is thus ignored rather than studied.[189]
Memorials
In Swansea's maritime quarter are the Dylan Thomas Theatre, home of the
Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member, and the former
Guildhall built in 1825 and now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a
literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and setting for the
annual Dylan Thomas Festival.[190] Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of
Thomas, by John Doubleday.[191] Another monument to Thomas stands in
Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace.
The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park[192]
inscribed with the closing lines from Fern Hill.
List of works
The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition. Ed. with Introduction by John
Goodby. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2014.
The Notebook Poems 193034, ed. Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1989.
Collected Stories, ed. Walford Davies. London: Dent, 1983
Under Milk Wood, ed. Walford Davies and Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1995
Opera adaptation
Unter dem Milchwald by German composer Walter Steffens on his own libretto using Erich Fried's
translation of Under Milk Wood into German, Hamburg State Opera 1973 and Staatstheater Kassel 1977
See also
Cultural depictions of Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas Trail
Footnotes
Notes
1. In his 1989 biography of Thomas, Ferris claims that two of Thomas's friends had stated that they met him
in London in 1932, though his late 1933 visit to the city is the first for which evidence exists.[26]
2. Davenport was, for many years, literary editor of The Observer newspaper. "From July to November
1940 Dylan Thomas and his family stayed at 'The Malting House' 78 High Street, Marshfield, near
Chippenham in Gloucestershire, with the critic John Davenport and his American painter wife, Clement,
who kept an open house for musicians and writers. The composers Lennox Berkeley and Arnold Cooke,
the music critic William Glock and writer Antonia White, joined them."[50]
3. The reason for being graded unsuitable for military service is vague. His mother said it was due to
"punctured lungs", while Vernon Watkins believed it was "scarred" lungs. Neither statement is
corroborated by Thomas's autopsy, although Milton Helpern found some emphysema, probably caused
by chain-smoking.[54]
4. The footage was taken from Riefenstahl's 1935 propaganda film Triumph des Willens.[61]
5. John Brinnin in his 1956 book, Dylan Thomas in America (p. 104) states that on a visit to Laugharne in
1951 he was shown "more than two hundred separate and distinct versions of the poem (Fern Hill)" by
Thomas.
6. FitzGibbon, in his 1965 biography, lists 39 venues visited in the first U.S. trip, compiled with the help of
John Brinnin, but accepts that some locations may have been missed.
7. The BBC submitted the play posthumously along with a French translation by Jacques-Bernard
Brunius.[117]
8. Although both agree that he left London on 19 October, biographers Ferris and FitzGibbon disagree on
his arrival date. Ferris in his 1989 work gives Thomas's arrival in New York as 19 October (p. 329) while
FitzGibbon writing in 1965 states 20 October (p. 391).
9. David N. Thomas (2008) writes: "He knew that he should see a doctor but feared that he would be
pronounced unfit and the trip cancelled". Thomas was financially committed to going.
10. Ruthven Todd states in his letter dated 23 November that the police were called, who then called the
ambulance, while Ferris in his 1989 biography writes that Feltenstein was summoned again and called
the ambulance. D. N. Thomas concurs that Feltenstein eventually returned at 1 am and summoned the
ambulance, although it took nearly another hour to get him admitted to the hospital.
11. In reply to a student's questions in 1951, Thomas stated: "I do not think that Joyce has had any hand at all
in my writing; certainly his Ulysses has not. On the other hand, I cannot deny on the shaping of some of
my Portrait stories might owe something to Joyce's stories in the volume, Dubliners. But then Dubliners
was a pioneering work in the world of the short story, and no good storywriter since can have failed, in
some way, however little, to have benefited by it." FitzGibbon (1965), p. 370
12. In his notes to page 186, Ferris (1989) states that in a BBC Home Service programme aired in 1950,
Poetic License, in which Campbell and Thomas appeared, Thomas said "I won't forgive you for the
Swansea's Rimbaud, because you called me that first Roy".
13. "The Orchard" makes reference to the 'Black Book of Llareggub'. Here Thomas makes links with religion
and the mythic Wales of the White Book of Rhydderch and the Black Book of Carmarthen.
14. Jones notes that in Thomas's early work, such as Eighteen Poems, the iambic foot was the rhythmic basis
of his line, while in his later work a count of syllables replaced a count of accents.[172]
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Bold, Alan (1976). Cambridge Book of English Verse, 19391975. Cambridge University Press.
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Ferris, Paul (1993). Caitlin, The life of Caitlin Thomas. London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6290-1.
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Glyn Jones (1968). The Dragon has Two Tongues. London: J.M. Dent & Sons ltd.
Korg, Jacob (1965). Dylan Thomas. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-1548-4.
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226-62917-1.
Read, Bill (1964). The Days of Dylan Thomas. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Thomas, Caitlin; Tremlett, George (1986). Caitlin, Life with Dylan Thomas. London: Secker & Warburg.
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Thomas, Caitlin (1997). My Life with Dylan Thomas, Double Drink Story. London: Viking. ISBN 978-0-
670-87378-4.
Thomas, David N. (2000). Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow. Bridgend. ISBN 1-
85411-275-9.
Thomas, David N. (2008). Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?. Seren. ISBN 978-1-85411-480-8.
Further reading
John Malcolm Brinnin (1956). Dylan Thomas in America: an intimate journal. Little, Brown and Cooper.
Cox, Charles B., ed. (1966). Dylan Thomas: a Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Englewood
Cliffs.
Janes, Hilly (2014). The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas. London: The Robson Press. ISBN 978-1-84954-
688-1.
Kershner, J. B. (1976). Dylan Thomas: The Poet and His Critics. Amer Library Assn. ISBN 978-0-8389-
0226-4.
Andrew Sinclair (2003). Dylan the Bard: A Life of Dylan Thomas. London: Constable and Robinson.
ISBN 1-84119-741-6.
Thomas, Caitlin (1957). Leftover Life to Kill. Putham.
Thomas, David N., ed. (2003). Dylan Remembered, Volume 1: 19131934. Seren. ISBN 978-1-85411-
348-1.
Thomas, David N., ed. (2004). Dylan Remembered, Volume 2: 19351953. Seren. ISBN 978-1-85411-
363-4.
External links
Discover Dylan Thomas Official Family & Estate Web Site
Dylan Thomas on IMDb
Dylan Thomas at the Internet Broadway Database
Works by Dylan Thomas at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by Dylan Thomas (public domain in Canada). Retrieved 11 September 2010
Profile at the Poetry Foundation
Profile with poems written and audio, at the Poetry Archive
Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea, Web site
BBC Wales' Dylan Thomas site. Retrieved 11 September 2010
"Poem in October" recited by Dylan Thomas, BBC Radio, September 1945. Retrieved 5 August 2014
The Dylan Thomas Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 11
September 2010
Audio files: Anthology Film Archives including Dylan Thomas (drunk), Symposium at Cinema 16, 28
October 1953. Retrieved 11 September 2010
Dylan Thomas Digital Collection from the University at Buffalo Libraries
"Archival material relating to Dylan Thomas". UK National Archives.
Portraits of Dylan Thomas at the National Portrait Gallery, London