Dylan Thomas: Biography from Answers.com

The British poet Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953) has been acclaimed as one of the most important poets of the century. His lyrics rank among the most powerful and captivating of modern poetry.

Dylan Thomas was born in the Welsh seaport of Swansea, Carmarthenshire, on Oct. 27, 1914. His father was an English teacher and a would-be poet, from whom Dylan inherited his intellect and literary abilities. From his mother, a simple and religious woman, Dylan inherited his disposition, temperament, and Celtic sentimentality. He attended the Swansea Grammar School, where he received all of his formal education. As a student, he made contributions to the school magazine and was keenly interested in local folklore. He said that as a boy he was "small, thin, indecisively active, quick to get dirty, curly."

After leaving school Thomas supported himself as an actor, reporter, reviewer, and scriptwriter and with various odd jobs. When he was 22 years old, he married Caitlin Macnamara, by whom he had two sons, Llewelyn and Colm, and a daughter, Aeron. After his marriage, Thomas moved to the fishing village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

The need to support his growing family forced Thomas to write radio scripts for the Ministry of Information and documentaries for the British government. During World War II he served as an antiaircraft gunner. After the war he became a commentator on poetry for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In 1950 Thomas made the first of three lecture tours through the United States - the others were in 1952 and 1953 - in which he gave more than 100 poetry readings. In these recitals he half declaimed, half sang the lines in his "Welsh singing" voice. Many critics have attested to the rolling vigor of his voice, its melodic subtlety, and its almost hypnotic power of incantation.

The English poet Edith Sitwell described Thomas as follows: "He was not tall, but was extremely broad, and gave an impression of extraordinary strength, sturdiness, and superabundant life. (His reddish-amber curls, strong as the curls on the brow of a young bull, his proud, but not despising, bearing, emphasized this.) Mr. Augustus John's portrait of him is beautiful but gives him a cherubic aspect, which though pleasing, does not convey … Dylan's look of archangelic power. In full face he looked much as William Blake must have looked as a young man. He had full eyes - like those of Blake - giving him at first the impression of being unseeing, but seeing all, looking over immeasurable distances."

Thomas's poetic output was not large. He wrote only six poems in the last 6 years of his life. Dissipation and a grueling lecture schedule hindered his literary output in these years. His conviction that he would die young led him to create "instant Dylan" - the persona of the wild young Welsh bard, damned by drink and women, that he believed his public wanted. When he was 35 years old, he described himself as "old, small, dark, intelligent, and darting-doting-dotting eyed … balding and toothlessing." He had grown corpulent but retained his grace of movement.

During his visit to the United States in 1953, Thomas was scheduled to read his own and other poetry in some 40 university towns throughout the country. He also intended to work on the libretto of an opera for Igor Stravinsky in the latter's California home. Thomas celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday in New York City in a mood of gay exhilaration following the phenomenal success of his just-published Collected Poems. The festivities ended in collapse and illness, and on Nov. 9, 1953, he died in St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. Some reports attribute his death to pneumonia induced by acute alcoholism, others to encephalopathy, a virulent brain disease. His body was returned to Laugharne, Wales, for burial.

Literary Works

Thomas published his first book of poetry, Eighteen Poems (1934), when he was not yet 20 years old. "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, " wrote Kenneth Rexroth. Thomas's second and third volumes were Twenty-five Poems (1936) and The Map of Love (1939). The poems of his first three volumes were collected in The World I Breathe (1939).

By this time, Thomas was being hailed as the most spectacular of the surrealist poets. He acknowledged his debt to James Joyce and strewed his pages with invented words and fused puns. Thomas also acknowledged his debt to Sigmund Freud, stating: "Poetry is the rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision…. Poetry must drag further into the clear nakedness of light more even of the hidden causes than Freud could realize."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) is a collection of humorous autobiographical sketches. Thomas loved the wild landscape of Wales, and he put much of his childhood and youth into these stories. He published two more new collections of poetry, both of which contained some of his finest work: Deaths and Entrances (1946) and In Country Sleep (1951). Collected Poems, 1934-1953 (1953) contains all of his poetry that he wished to preserve.

Themes and Style

Thomas claimed that his poetry was "the record of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light…. To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness is to make clean." He also wrote that his poems "with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damned fool if they weren't." Passionate and intense, vivid and violent, Thomas wrote that he became a poet because "I had fallen in love with words." His sense of the richness and variety and flexibility of the English language shines through all of his work.

The theme of all of Thomas's poetry is the celebration of the divine purpose that he saw in all human and natural processes. The cycle of birth and flowering and death, of love and death, suffuses his poems. He celebrated life in the seas and fields and hills and towns of his native Wales. In some of his shorter poems, he sought to recapture a child's innocent vision of the world.

Thomas was passionately dedicated to his "sullen art, " and he was a competent, finished, and occasionally intricate craftsman. He made, for example, more than 200 versions of "Fern Hill" before he was satisfied with it. His early poems are relatively obscure and complex in sense and simple and obvious in auditory patterns. His later poems, on the other hand, are simple in sense but complex in sounds.

Under Milk Wood, a radio play commissioned by the BBC (published 1954), was Thomas's last completed work. This poem-play is not a drama but a pageant of eccentric, outrageous, and charming Welsh villagers. During the 24 hours presented in the play, the characters reminisce about the casual and crucial moments of their lives. Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Stories (1955) contains all the uncollected stories and shows the wit and humor that made Thomas an enchanting companion.

Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas
Born	27 October 1914^[1] Swansea, South Wales, UK^[1]
Died	9 November 1953 (aged 39)^[1] New York, USA^[1]
Occupation	Poet and writer
Literary movement	Modernism Romanticism
Spouse(s)	Caitlin Macnamara (1937-1953)
Children	Llewellyn Edouard Thomas (1939-2000) Aeronwy Bryn Thomas (1943-2009) Colm Garan Hart Thomas (b. 1949)

Influences Arthur Rimbaud, D. H. Lawrence, Welsh Mythology, James Joyce, John Donne

Influenced John Lennon, Bob Dylan

Early life

Dylan Thomas was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drivein the Uplands area of Swansea, South Wales, on 27 October 1914 just a few months after the new house was bought by the Thomas family. Uplands was, and still is, one of the more affluent areas of the city, which kept him away from the more industrial areas. His father, David John ('DJ') Thomas, was an English master who taught English literature at the local grammar school. His mother, Florence Hannah Thomas (née Williams), was a seamstress born in Swansea. Dylan had a sister, Nancy, eight years older than he. Their father brought up both children to speak English only, even though both parents also knew Welsh and DJ was known to give Welsh lessons at home to children.

Dylan is pronounced [ˈdəlan] in Welsh, and in the early part of his career some announcers introduced him using this pronunciation. However, Dylan himself favoured the anglicised pronunciation /ˈdɪlən/ his mother was afraid that the Welsh pronouciation would be corrupted into 'Dull One'. His middle name, Marlais, was given to him in honour of his great-uncle, Unitarian minister William Thomas, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.

His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his maternal aunt's Carmarthenshire dairy farm. These rural sojourns and the contrast with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably many short stories, radio essays and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to be a sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own and was considered too frail to fight in World War II, instead serving the war effort by writing scripts for the government. He suffered from bronchitis and asthma.

Thomas's formal education began at Mrs. Hole's 'Dame School', a private school, which was situated a few streets away on Mirador Crescent. He described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning (New Directions Publishing, 1968).

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."

In October 1925, Thomas attended the single-sex Swansea Grammar School, in the Mount Pleasant district of the city. Thomas's first poem was published in the school's magazine, of which he later became an editor. He left school at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post only to leave the job under pressure 18 months later in 1932. He then joined an amateur dramatic group in Mumbles, but still continued to work as a freelance journalist for a few more years.

Thomas spent his days visiting the cinema in the Uplands, walking along Swansea Bay, and frequenting Swansea's public houses, especially those in the Mumbles area, the 'Antelope Hotel' and 'The Mermaid Hotel'; a theatre he used to perform at, among them. Thomas was also a regular patron of the 'Kardomah Café' in Castle Street in the centre of Swansea, a short walk from the local newspaper for which he worked, where he mingled with various contemporaries, such as his good friend poet Vernon Watkins. These poets, musicians, and artists became known as 'The Kardomah Gang'.

In 1932, Thomas embarked on what would be one of his various visits to London.

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a 'three nights' blitz'. Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were destroyed. Thomas later wrote about this in his radio play Return Journey Home, in which he describes the café as being "razed to the snow". Return Journey Home was first broadcast on 15 June 1947, having been written soon after the bombing raids. Thomas walked the bombed-out shell which was once his home town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded, "Our Swansea is dead". The 'Kardomah Café' later reopened on Portland street, not far from the original location.

Career

Thomas wrote half of his poems and many short stories while living at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, And death shall have no dominion is one of his best known works written at this address. His highly acclaimed^[4] first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, the same year he moved to London. The publication of 18 Poems won him many new admirers from the world of poetry, including Edith Sitwell; although it was also the time that his reputation for alcohol abuse developed. The househas been recently restored to its condition as a new house when bought by the Thomas family and is available for house tours and to stay as an experiential selfcatering home.

At the outset of the Second World War Dylan was designated C3, which meant that although he could, in theory, be called up for service he would be in one of the last groups to be so. He was saddened to see his friends enter active service leaving him behind and drank whilst struggling to support his family. He wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information asking for employment but after a rebuff eventually ended up working for Strand Films. Strand produced films for the Ministry of Information and Thomas scripted at least five in 1942 with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye), New Towns For Old, These Are The Men and Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain).^[5]

The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point^[6]^[7]^[8] in his career. Thomas was well known for being a versatile and dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings.^[9] His powerful voice would captivate American audiences during his speaking tours of the early 1950s. He made over 200 broadcasts for the BBC. Often considered his greatest single work is Under Milk Wood, a radio play featuring the characters of Llareggub, a fictional Welsh fishing village (humorously named; note that 'Llareggub' is 'Bugger All' backwards, implying that there is absolutely nothing to do there). The BBC credited their producer Stella Hillier with ensuring the play actually materialised. Assigned "some of the more wayward characters who were then writing for the BBC", she dragged the notoriously unreliable Thomas out of the pub and back to her office to finish the work.^[10] Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast; he was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film.

Marriage and children

In the spring of 1936, Dylan Thomas met Caitlin MacNamara, a dancer. They met in the Wheatsheaf public house, in the Fitzrovia area of London's West End. They were introduced by Augustus John, who was MacNamara's lover at the time (there were rumours that she continued her relationship with John after she married Thomas). A drunken Thomas proposed marriage on the spot, and the two began a courtship.^[11]

On 11 July 1937, Thomas married MacNamara at Penzance registry office in Cornwall. In 1938 the couple rented a cottage in the place Thomas was to help make famous, the village of Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Their first child was born on 30 January 1939, a boy whom they named Llewelyn Edouard (died in 2000). He was followed on 3 March 1943 by a daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis (died in 2009). A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born on 24 July 1949.

The marriage was tempestuous, with rumours of affairs on both sides. In 2004, Thomas's passionate love letters to MacNamara were auctioned.^[12] Jay Leno owns some of them.^[13]

Addiction

Dylan's image on the pub sign of his Laugharne 'local', Browns Hotel.

Thomas liked to boast about his addiction, saying;

An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do.^[14]

Thomas "liked the taste of whisky," and he did quite his fair share of drinking, although the amount he is supposed to have drunk may have been an exaggeration. After Ruthven Todd, a Scottish poet, had introduced Thomas to the White Horse Tavern, it quickly became a firm favourite of the Welshman. During an incident on 3 November 1953, Thomas returned to the Chelsea Hotel in New York, from the White Horse Tavern and exclaimed, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that is a record." However, the barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time, later told Ruthven Todd, that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that amount, after Todd decided to find out. Before Thomas left for New York in 1953, he stayed at The Bush Hotel in Swansea, which was later known as The Bush Inn.

Death

Dylan Thomas died in New York on 9 November 1953. The first rumours were of a brain haemorrhage, followed by reports that he had been mugged. Soon came the stories about alcohol, that he drank himself to death. Later, there were speculations about drugs and diabetes.

He was already ill when he arrived in New York on 20 October to take part in Under Milk Wood at the city's prestigious Poetry Center. He also took part in a recorded symposium on 28 October at Cinema 16: "Poetry And The Film" which included panellists Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, and Willard Maas.

Thomas had a history of blackouts and chest problems, and was using an inhaler to help his breathing. The director of the Poetry Center was John Brinnin. He was also Thomas's tour agent, taking a hefty twenty-five percent fee. Despite his duty of care, Brinnin remained at home in Boston and handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport who told her that he had had a terrible week, had missed her terribly and wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Liz's previous misgivings about their relationship they spent the rest of the day and night together at the Chelsea.

The next day she invited him to her apartment but he declined saying that he was not feeling well and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon.

After spending the night with him at the hotel Liz went back to her own apartment for a change of clothes. At breakfast Herb Hannum noticed how sick Dylan was looking and suggested a visit to a Dr. Feltenstein before the performance of Under Milk Wood that evening.

Liz would later describe him as a wild doctor who believed injections could cure anything. He went quickly to work with his needle, and Thomas made it through the two performances of Under Milk Wood, but collapsed straight afterwards.

October 27 was his thirty-ninth birthday. In the evening, he went to a party in his honour but was so unwell that he returned to his hotel. A turning point came on 2 November, when air pollution rose to levels that were a threat to those with chest problems. By the end of the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog.

Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam-house in New Jersey on 4 November, but when telephoned at the Chelsea that morning he said that he was feeling awful and asked to take a "rain-check". He did however accompany Liz to the White Horse for a few beers. Feeling sick he again returned to the hotel.

Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing morphine. This seriously affected Dylan's breathing. At midnight on 5 November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Liz Reitell unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein. The night porter at the hotel then called the police who summoned an ambulance.

By 01:58 Thomas had been admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's, by which time he was profoundly comatose. The doctors on duty found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the presence of an infection. The hospital let the pneumonia run its course and Thomas died on 9 November.

At the post-mortem, the pathologist found that the immediate cause of death was swelling of the brain, caused by the pneumonia reducing the supply of oxygen. Despite his heavy drinking his liver showed little sign of cirrhosis. However there was pressure on the brain from a build-up of cerebro-spinal fluid, caused by alcohol poisoning.

According to Lycett the main cause of Dylan's demise was the alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife Caitlin, now doomed by her resentment at his betrayals in America.^[15]

Following his death, his body was brought back to Wales for his burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne on 25 November. One of the last people to stay at his graveside after the funeral was his mother, Florence. His wife, Caitlin, died in 1994 and was buried alongside him.

The rumor that Dylan's death was related to alcoholism is denied in the book 'Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?', by David N. Thomas, in which he suggests Dylan died from medical malpractice when Dr. Feltenstein gave him morphine for delirium tremens — in actuality, he had pneumonia. David N. Thomas also suggests that Feltenstein covered his tracks by pressuring other doctors to agree that it was an alcohol-related death.^[16]

Style

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as 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 he 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 again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and preaching, and Freud.^[17]

Poetry

Thomas's poetry is famous for its musicality, most notable in poems such as Fern Hill, In the White Giant's Thigh, In Country Sleep and Ballad of the Long-legged Bait. Do not go gentle into that good night, possibly his most popular poem, is unrepresentative of his usual poetic style. Following are a few examples.

From In my Craft or Sullen Art:^[18]

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

From In the White Giant's Thigh:^[19]

Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house
and heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,
the scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse
of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed. . .

Thomas's poem And death shall have no dominion is noted for its metaphysical sentiment and assertion of the eternal continuity of life in nature.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

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. He did not understand all of their contents, but he loved their sounds, and the acoustic qualities of the English language became his focus in his work later. He claimed that the meanings of a poem were of "very secondary nature" to him.^{[citation needed]}

Thomas memorials

Statue of Dylan Thomas in Swansea's maritime quarter, unveiled by Lady Mary Wilson.

A statue of Thomas is in the city's maritime quarter. The Dylan Thomas (Little) Theatre and the Dylan Thomas Centre, formerly the town's Guildhall, are also found in Swansea. The latter is now a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held, and is the setting for an annual 'Dylan Thomas Festival'. Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. The memorial is a small rock in a closed-off garden, set within the park. The rock is inscribed with the closing lines from Fern Hill

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan's £5 writing shed overlooking the Afon Taf, near the Boat House, Laugharne. It cost £75 to erect on its cliff-ledge platform in the 1920s, when it was used to garage a Wolseley car.

Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boat House, has been made a memorial.

Several of the pubs in Swansea also have associations with the poet. One of Swansea's oldest pubs, the No Sign Bar, was a regular haunt of Thomas's. It is mentioned in his story, The Followers but has subsequently been renamed the 'Wine Vaults'. And since, has been re-named The No-Sign Wine Bar.

Thomas's obituary was written by his long-term friend Vernon Watkins. A class 153 diesel multiple unit was named Dylan Thomas 1914 - 1953. In 2004 a new literary prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize,^[20] was created in honour of the poet. It is awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. Following this, in 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award^[21] was established. The prize is administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, and is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival.

In 1982, a plaque was unveiled in honour of Dylan Thomas, in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Cross-cultural tributes

1965: A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission), in this Paul Simon song, he refers to Dylan Thomas in the lyrics: "When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas, whoever he was".

Igor Stravinsky wrote In memoriam Dylan Thomas: Dirge canons and song (1954) for tenor voice, string quartet, and four trombones, based on Do not go gentle into that good night.

American composer Milton Babbitt set "Vision and Prayer" (1961) for soprano and synthesized accompaniment. The work was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and first performed by Bethany Beardslee.

The cover of The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band includes a photograph of Dylan Thomas.

Under Milk Wood a 1965 album by Stan Tracey, inspired by Dylan Thomas, is one of the most celebrated jazz recordings made in the United Kingdom.

Kenneth Rexroth wrote Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Memorial for Dylan Thomas (1955) in honour of Dylan Thomas.^[22] An account of the first reading of the poem at the Cellar in Green Street, San Francisco, forms the second chapter of The Astonished I (Memories and Wet Dreams) by Dick McBride.^[23]

John Cale set a number of Thomas's poems to music: There was a saviour, Do not go gentle into that good night, On a Wedding Anniversary and Lie still, sleep becalmed, recording them in his 1989 album Words for the Dying and (except for the first one) in his 1992 solo live album Fragments of a Rainy Season.

In the 1994 film Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke's character mimics Dylan Thomas's voice, reading a fragment from the well-known poem As I Walked Out One Evening written by W.H. Auden.

Musician Ben Taylor named his 2003 album Famous Among the Barns in tribute to Dylan Thomas.

In the 2002 film Solaris, Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) reads the first stanza of And Death Shall Have no Dominion.

In Peter De Vries's 1964 novel Reuben, Reuben on which a 1983 movie was based, the character Gowan McGland is loosely based on Dylan Thomas.

The German band Chamber used two poems by Dylan Thomas on their debut album Chamber: L'orchestre de chambre noir: "The conversation of prayer" (used for the song "Another conversation") and "Ceremony after a fire raid".

In the 80's comedic film Back To School Rodney Dangerfield performs a silly, melodramatic reading of "Do not go gentle into that good night".

The film The Edge Of Love (2008) is based on part of Thomas's life in Swansea during World War II. He is portrayed by actor Matthew Rhys.

A portion of And death shall have no dominion was read as the album introduction on Anti-Meridian by Brave Saint Saturn.

Dannie Abse wrote an "Elegy for Dylan Thomas" in his poetry collection Welsh Retrospective.

American actor Dylan Thomas Sprouse is named after this poet.

The American folk-singer Bob Dylan, whose real name is Robert Zimmerman, allegedly took his name from Dylan Thomas.^[24]

American composer John Corigliano composed a haunting and bittersweet choral arrangement of "Fern Hill" for mezzo-soprano solo, chorus and orchestra in 1959.

Joyce Cary's hero of "The Horse's Mouth" and "Herself Surprised", Gully Jimson, is based largely on his friend Dylan Thomas, only Cary has made Thomas a painter and in his 60s. Alec Guinness both wrote the screenplay for "The Horse's Mouth" (1958) and starred as Gully. He later played Thomas in Sidney Michael's play "Dylan" (1964), winning a Tony award for his performance.

Bibliography

Poetry

18 Poems (1934)[OOP]
The Map of Love (1939) [OOP]
Twenty-Five Poems (1936) [OOP]
New Poems (1943) [OOP]
Deaths and Entrances (1946) [OOP]
Twenty-Six Poems (1950) [OOP]
In Country Sleep (1952) [OOP]
Collected Poems, 1934-1952 (1952)

Prose

Collected Letters
Collected Stories
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940 Dent)
Quite Early One Morning (posthumous)
Adventures In The Skin Trade And Other Stories (1955, posthumous)
Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas (1946) [OOP]
A Prospect of the Sea (1955) [OOP]
A Child's Christmas in Wales (1955)
Letters to Vernon Watkins (1957)
Rebecca's Daughters (1965)
After the Fair
The Tree
The Dress
The Visitor
The Vest

Drama

Under Milk Wood
The Doctor and the Devils and Other Scripts (1953)

Miscellaneous

The Beach of Falesa (1964) [OOP]
Dylan Thomas — a Collection of Critical Essays: Charles B. Cox (ed.) (1966) [OOP]
Selected Works (The Map of Love, Selected Poems and Under Milk Wood) Guild Publishing, London 1982
The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas (1984)
The Poems of Dylan Thomas (1979)
On the Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts
Eight Stories (1993)
Dylan Thomas: The Complete Screenplays (1995)
Fern Hill: An Illustrated edition of the Dylan Thomas poem. [1998]
Collected Poems 1934 – 1953 (London: Phoenix, 2003)
Selected Poems (London: Phoenix, 2001)

Discography

Dylan Thomas: Volume I — A Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems (Caedmon TC 1002 - 1952)
Under Milk Wood (Caedmon TC 2005 - 1953)
Dylan Thomas: Volume II — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1018 - 1954)
Dylan Thomas: Volume III — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1043)
Dylan Thomas: Volume IV — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1061)
Dylan Thomas: Quite early one morning and other memories (Caedmon TC 1132 - 1960)

Filmography

"The Edge of Love", 2008, directed by John Mybury, written by Sharman Macdonald
Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM D23702 - 2006 (DVD Region 0))
Under Milk Wood, 1972, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole
A Child's Christmas in Wales, a 1987 film based on Dylan Thomas's work of the same name. Directed by Don McBrearty.
Rebecca's Daughters starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson

Other media representations

1964: Dylan, a Broadway play by Sidney Michaels starring Alec Guinness as Dylan.
1978: Dylan, movie about Dylan Thomas's final visit to America, concluding with his death in New York on 9 November, 1953. Directed by Richard Lewis.
1990-91: Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, a one-man stage show featuring Bob Kingdom as Thomas and directed by Anthony Hopkins.^[25]
2008: The Edge of Love, movie about WWII events starring Matthew Rhys as the poet.
2008: Marillion's 2008 Christmas CD (Pudding On The Ritz) contains a reading of A Child's Christmas In Wales put to music written by the band.^[26]

Impact on other cultural figures

This "In popular culture" section may contain too many minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivia references. (October 2009)

Musician Bob Dylan once said the work of Dylan Thomas influenced the change of his name from Zimmerman to Dylan but on other occasions he attributed this to Marshal Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke.
Welsh musician John Cale has been highly influenced by the work of Dylan Thomas, even setting several of his poems ("There Was a Saviour", "On a Wedding Anniversary", "Lie Still", "Sleep Becalmed" and "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night") to orchestral music on his 1989 album Words for the Dying, as well as a musical setting of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" on his album Paris 1919.
American author Shirley Jackson met Thomas once briefly in her family home and wrote several short stories dedicated to and loosely based around Thomas.
Leeds-based band Chumbawamba loosely borrowed from the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" in the songs "Rage" from the album Anarchy and "Song for Derek Jarman" from the "Homophobia" EP.
American band Brave Saint Saturn quoted a portion of the poem "And death shall have no dominion" in the song "Here is the News" from the album Anti-Meridian.
Christian rock band A Cross Between quotes from "Do not go Gentle into that Good Night" on their song "Rage Against the Dying of the Light" on their 1999 self-titled album.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Dylan Thomas", Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved 11 January 2008.
^ "Biography - Dylan Thomas", BBC Wales, 11 January 2008
^ "''In my craft or sullen art'' retrieved October 29, 2008". Naic.edu. http://www.naic.edu/~gibson/poems/dthomas1.html. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ George Tremlett, Dylan Thomas: In the Mercy of His Means (London: Constable, 1991), ISBN 0-09-472180-7
^ Lycett, Andrew (2008-06-21). "The reluctant propagandist". The Guardian. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/story/0,,2286844,00.html. Retrieved 2008-06-24.
^ "It is difficult to convey in a few words the quality of Mr Thomas's poetry"—Vita Sackville-West, The Observer.
^ "Dylan Thomas is not only the best living Welsh poet, but is a great poet."—John Betjeman, The Daily Herald.
^ "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet"—W. J. Turner, The Spectator.
^ Poem of the Week from 10/29/97^{[dead link]}
^ Nick Serpell, Veterans pass on the baton, BBC Obituaries, 1 December 2008
^ "Race to put the passion of Dylan's Caitlin on big screen | UK News | The Observer". Observer.guardian.co.uk. 2006-11-26. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1957289,00.html. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ Telegraph, reproduced in The Age, 7 April 2004, p. 10
^ Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 4 March 2009
^ "Dylan Thomas Quotes". Famouspoetsandpoems.com. 2007-05-17. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/dylan_thomas/quotes. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ Lycett 2003
^ David N. Thomas, Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?
^ M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.), 2705-2706.
^ In My Craft Or Sullen Art, by Dylan Thomas on 'Famous Poets and Poems' website
^ In the White Giant's Thigh
^ "Dylan Thomas Prize". Dylan Thomas Prize. http://www.thedylanthomasprize.com/. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ "2010". Sbff09.com. http://www.sbff09.com. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ Rexroth, K: Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Memorial for Dylan Thomas Horace Schwartz, 1955
^ McBride, D: The Astonished I: Memories and Wet Dreams McBride's Books, 1995 ISBN 0952713608
^ "Bob Dylan: "I'm a poet, and I know it"". Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5817. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ Dylan Thomas: Return Journey Details on Theatres International website
^ "MUSIC — Discography — Christmas 2008 | The Official Marillion Website". marillion.com. http://www.marillion.com/music/xmas/2008.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
^ http://www.seren-books.com/product-search/p/2116/
^ http://www.seren-books.com/product-search/p/1984/
^ http://www.seren-books.com/product-search/p/1979/
^ http://www.seren-books.com/product-search/p/1873/
^ http://www.seren-books.com/product-search/p/1987/

External links

This article's external links may not follow Wikipedia's content policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links. (January 2009)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dylan Thomas

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

		Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Dylan Thomas biography from Who2. Read more
		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dylan Thomas". Read more

Dylan Thomas

Contents