Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet born in Swansea, North Wales on 27th October 1914. He died, aged 39, in St. Vincent's Hospital, New York on November 9th 1953 from an overdose of morphine, alcohol, prescription pills, while suffering from pneumonia. After his death his poems were resounding all over the world, eventually earning him a plaque in Westminster Abbey. He left a wife, Caitlin, and three young children: Lewellyn Edouard, Aeronwy Bryn and Colm Garan Hart.

Helpful Link: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/treasures/02_lit.html#thomas

His most famous (radio) play, Under Milk Wood is still performed to worldwide audiences today. It describes the everyday life in the small Welsh village Llaregubb ( buggerall spelled backwards); it was first performed at the Kaufman Auditorium Poetry Center, New York, May 14 1953.

Being described as A Play for Voices, the cast was made up of 5 performers: Dion Allen, Allan Collins, Roy Poole, Sada Thompson, Nancy Wickwire and Dylan Thomas himself. With the entire cast taking on fifty-four parts the rehearsal period prior to the premiere was an exciting but gruelling time for Dylan. Not only did he rehearse with the actors, he also wrote, rewrite, and directed the play. Not being satisfied with its conclusion he worked on an improvised ending minutes before the play was due to be performed.

The reception to the performance of Under Milk Wood was overwhelming. The audience's standing ovation demanded 15 curtain calls, until Dylan came out alone. Bewildered but deeply touched by this outburst of enthusiasm to his writing, he cried tears of joy

On returning to Britain, Thomas was told by physicians in London that his heavy drinking had taken its toll on his health. If he were to survive, alcohol wasn't an option.

Early years

As a child, Dylan suffered from asthma and bronchitis. He had one sister, Nancy who was eight years older, with whom he felt close, but they had little contact. Being a shy child with a vivid imagination he preferred staying at home and read on his own. At the age of 8 he started writing his own poetry.

Even though both his parents spoke Welsh, and his father was an English literature teacher, Dylan didn't speak Welsh. He wrote exclusively in English throughout his life.

Love Life

At the age of nineteen, in January 1933 Dylan's essay Genius and Madness Akin in the World of Art was published in the South Wales Evening Post. His poems were published nationally in the prestigious Adelphi, and the Sunday Referree later that summer.

A young woman, Pamela Handsford Johnson contacted Dylan after reading his work. An intense correspondence followed, with both Dylan and Pamela feeling they knew each other intimately. Eventually they met in London and spent the night drinking, listening to records and talking late into the night. Even though they were close and there was talk of marriage, Pamela ended the relationship after two years with accusations of Dylan being thoughtless and unreliable.

Shortly after the break up, in the spring of 1936 Dylan met Caitlin Macnamara in the London pub The Wheatsheaf in Rathbone Place. Caitlin was slightly older than Dylan, fierce and individual, confident and convinced that "all men were bastards." For Dylan it was love at first sight, and after a few hours together told her she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever met, and wanted to marry her. Caitlin was touched and flattered by the vulnerable poet and the next 5 days and nights were spent on a pub-crawl around London.

Toward the end of 1936 Dylan and Caitlin were deeply in love and living together. During a simple ceremony they were married on July 11, 1937 at Penzance Registry Office in Cornwall.

Moving in to a rented cottage in Laugharne, West Wales, they were inseparable, with Caitlin referring to Dylan as her 'twin soul'. In her book 'Leftover Life to Kill', Caitlin described their appearances as :"..in our first, know nothing lamb-sappy days, Dylan may have been a skinny, springy lambkin, but I was more like its buxom mother then, and distinctly recollect carrying him across streams under one arm; 'till the roles were reversed, and he blew out, and I caved in, through the pressure of family life, and the advent of holy-fire destroying babies."

Domesticity and Career

After recording his first radio broadcast for BBC Wales in 1937 'Life and the Modern Poet', Dylan worked steadily on book reviews, his own work, and recordings for the BBC and being published in the United States. On January 30, 1939 Caitlin gave birth to their first son LLewellyn Edouard. In august that year The Map of Love, a collection of poems and short stories was published. Later in December 1939 The World I Breathe was published in the U.S.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (a collection of autobiographical stories) was printed in 1940, but the Second World War intervened with Dylan's finances. As people were concerned with rationings, and the insecurity of their future they weren't going to spent meagre earnings on art or literature.

As Dylan was neither patriotic, nor interested in "killing someone ", and convinced the concept of war to be ridiculous, he had to face a conscription tribunal. He appeared drunk and bloated for the commission and was given exemption on medical grounds. Boasting arrogantly about 'getting away with being drafted' didn't add to Dylan's popularity in the small village of Laugharne. Many sons and husbands had gone off to war to fight for their country, never to return alive. Dylan and Caitlin decided to leave Laugharne.

The Turning Point

Whilst staying at an estate in the South of England later that year something changed in the relationship between the once devoted couple; it appeared Catlin was rather attracted to another artist and was nearly unfaithful. It led to a violent, physical outburst by Dylan who couldn't accept the disloyalty shown by Caitlin. He told her he would never trust her again.

During the dark years of the war Dylan wrote war documentaries for the BBC. With the arrival of their second child, daughter Aeronwy Bryn in 1943, they both hoped it would unite them again as a family. But the rows, exaggerated by mutual heavy drinking, and separation periods only increased as they moved from house to house.

Italy

In 1947 Dylan and Caitlin made their first trip abroad, to Italy. Caitlin felt immediately at home and liked to go out and experience Italian life. Dylan hated it, preferring to stay indoors and listening to cricket on the radio. Here he composed In Country Heaven. After several months they moved back to Britain, and in 1949 the family moved in to the Boathouse in Laugharne, which was bought for them by long time benefactor Margaret Taylor. Here Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a son Colm Garan Hart, born July 1949.

America

At the beginning of 1950 both Dylan and Caitlin were aware of each other's infidelities. While Dylan chose to turn a blind eye, Caitlin found the tediousness of domestic life, together with lack of money and Dylan’s increasing absences reason enough to demand some changes.

When American director John Malcolm Brinnin invited Dylan to a lecture tour, with a fee of $1500, - plus airfare, Dylan saw an opportunity to work on a better future for himself and his family. On February 21, 1950 he arrived in New York.

Over the next three months he gave over 40 readings in New York and California, and played up his image of Wild Welsh poet.

Mayhem

Living a life so totally opposite of what he’d been used to, Dylan covered up his insecurities by drinking excessively. The same helplessness that Caitlin had found irresistible now became his Cupid’s arrow. This wild man of words captivated many women, and Dylan shared their beds willingly. His notoriously crude behaviour, drunkenness, cursing, sexual harassment and discourteous sense of humour earned him a terrible reputation among college crowds and celebrities.

Famously Dylan was rebuked by Charlie Chaplin (whom he greatly admired and wanted to meet), for arriving drunk at Chaplin’s party, crashing the car into his tennis court on arrival, and being rude to the guests. Dylan retaliated by urinating onto a large pot plant, and was asked to leave.

At the time dr. B.W. Murphy wrote on Dylan Thomas: ‘He can be best considered suffering from character neurosis, with increasing depression, dangerous alcoholic acting out, tormenting worry, progressive creative inhibition, indicating a sense of neurotic helplessness.’

Success and Tragedy

Dylan’s writing went on relentlessly, and in 1952 his Collected Poems was published, earning him major literary acclaim. The book was awarded the William Foyle Poetry Prize, and later in 1953 the Etna Taormina International Prize.

But tragedy followed his success when his father (with whom he had been close) died on December 16th, 1952. Not long after this loss Dylan’s only sister Nancy died in Bombay, April 1953. Feeling utterly alone, he composed the poem Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.

‘Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day,

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.’

Final Days

Dylan boarded the plane for his final trip to New York on October 19, 1953. Even though he promised Caitlin to send for her as soon as he had enough money, she believed their marriage to be over.

At the beginning of November while working on a new performance of Under Milk Wood and preparing to work with Igor Stravinsky in California later that year, Dylan complained of tiredness and feeling unwell. By now he was having an affair with John Malcolm Brinnin’s assistant Liz Reitell. She suggested he’d stay at her apartment but Dylan preferred to stay in his hotel room A doctor was summoned to Dylan’s room, in order to alleviate the symptoms and Dylan was given cortisone injections. That day Dylan continued drinking and vomiting, and Liz asked the doctor to re visit Dylan in the afternoon.

Dylan was given three times the normal dose of morphine, and fell into a coma not long after. He was rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital with Liz at his side. Caitlin was informed, and she made arrangements to come to New York as soon as possible. Dylan didn’t regain consciousness, and was placed under an oxygen tent. When Caitlin arrived at Dylan’s bedside on November 8th she was exhausted, stricken with grief, and drunk.

After snatching and breaking a crucifix from the wall, insulting onlookers, smoking in the room, assaulting an attending nun, and biting an orderly Caitlin was held for a period of straitjacket restraint, and brought to a private psychiatric hospital in Astoria, Long Island.

Dylan died the next day. A memorial service was held for him in New York.

Back Home

A distraught Caitlin accompanied Dylan’s body back to Britain. They sailed on the ss United States on November 24th 1953.

His body was put to rest at St. Martin’s churchyard in Laugharne, Wales.

Caitlin Macnamara Thomas died in 1994

Llewellyn Edouard Thomas died in 2000

Aeronwy Bryn Thomas died in 2009

Colm Garan Hart Thomas is the last surviving son of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas

Selected Works

18 Poems 1934

Twenty- Five Poems 1935

The Map of Love 1939

The World I breathe 1939

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog 1940

New Poems 1943

Deaths and Entrances 1946

Selected Writings 1946

Twenty Six Poems 1950

Collected Poems 1952

In Country Sleep 1952

The Doctor and the Devils 1953

Quite Early One Morning 1954

Under Milk Wood 1954

A Prospect of the Sea 1955

A Children’s Christmas in Wales 1955

Adventures in the Skin Trade 1955

Letters to Vernon Watkins 1957

The Beach of Falesa 1963

Miscellany 1963

The Colour of saying 1963

Selected Letters 1963

Twenty Years A-Growing 1964( a film script from the story by Maurice O’Sullivan)

Me and My Bike 1965 (film script)

Selected Letters 1966

Miscellany two 1966

The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas 1930-34, 1968

Twelve More Letters 1970

Dylan Thomas The Poems 1971

Dylan Thomas Early Prose Writings 1971

The Death of the King’s Canary 1976

Miscellany three 1978

The Collected Stories 1983

The Collected Stories 1985

Dylan Thomas: The Complete Screenplays 1995

The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas 2002