The Life and Works of Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet, wrote some of the most stirring and passionate verse in contemporary literature. As some literary experts say, he "dealt brilliantly with the three themes of childhood, growth, and death in a forceful and sometimes complex style”. His mood varied from rapture over the beauty of the world to indignation with its inevitable pain. He was renowned for the unique brilliance of his verbal imagery and for his celebration of natural beauty.1
Although Dylan came from a Welsh-speaking family, he did not know any Welsh, which bothered some of his fellow Welshmen. Although he was often misunderstood, it is clear from his work that he had a great affection for his country. His poems and stories are clearly Welsh in their musical quality and represent his childhood in Wales.2
Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea in 1914. His father, David John Thomas, was the senior English master at Swansea Grammar School, where Thomas was later educated. But Thomas still received very little formal education. He for a while edited the school magazine and ignoring his father’s advice to attend university, he quit his studies and worked as a newspaper reporter for the "South Wales Evening Post”.3 Later he went to London where he took interest in the literary scene. In 1934 his first book of poetry, "Eighteen Poems”, was published. Even though he was still very young, Dylan Thomas revealed unusual power in the use of poetic diction and imagery so the volume won him instant critical acclaim.4
Soon after "Eighteen Poems”, Thomas wrote "Deaths and Entrances” and "In Country Sleep”, which are most often regarded as containing his finest writing. Thomas’s other works include "Twenty-five Poems” and "The Map of Love”. His famous book, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog” is a group of autobiographical sketches, and "Adventures in the Skin Trade” contains one of his unfinished novels and some other prose pieces. During World War II Thomas wrote scripts for documentary movies.5
After the war, Thomas was a literary commentator for BBC radio. This is when he wrote "Under Milk Wood”, a play for voices, was originally written for radiobroadcast. When Thomas read the play for the first time to the public in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1953, it was still unfinished. The work became his most famous piece.6
In 1947 Thomas suffered a mental breakdown, so he moved to Oxford. In 1949 he returned to Wales and traveled to America the next year, mostly because of money problems. In the early 1950’s, Thomas continued his popular reading tours at American universities, although he did not like reading his own work. But, the tours were profitable and Thomas was often short of money. During this time Thomas began to drink large amounts of alcohol, and this hastened his death at a young age. Famous for his readings of his own poetry, Thomas became legendary in the United States.7 Unfortunately, Dylan Thomas died at the young age of 39 from an overdose of alcohol.
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