Thomas, Dylan Marlais 1914-53
Welsh poet

Born in Swansea, he was the son of a schoolmaster. He worked for a time as a reporter on the South Wales Evening Post and established himself with the publication of Eighteen Poems in 1934, in which year he moved to London, later settling permanently back in Wales at Laugharne (1949). In 1937 he married Caitlin Macnamara and published Twenty-Five Poems. His other works include The Map of Love (1939), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), The World I Breathe (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1946) and a scenario, The Doctor and the Devils. His Collected Poems, 1934-52, were published in 1952. From 1944 he worked intermittently on a radio 'play for voices' about a Welsh seaside village and in its first form it was called Quite Early One Morning. Thomas expanded it into Under Milk Wood, taking part in a reading of it in New York just before his death, from chronic alcohol abuse, while on a lecture tour of the USA. It was published in 1954. Until then his work had been praised by critics, among them Edith Sitwell, for his striking rhythms, his original imagery and his technical ingenuities, but he could in no sense be called a popular writer. Under Milk Wood was immediately comprehensible, funny and fresh, with moments of lyric tenderness. It had a second success as a stage play and inspired a jazz suite by Stan Tracey (1965). In 1955 an unfinished novel, Adventures in the Skin Trade, was published; also A Prospect of the Sea, a collection of stories and essays.

Bibliography: C Fitzgibbon, Dylan Thomas (1965)