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Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood. He also wrote stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime, and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet".
Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea in 1914, leaving school in 1932 to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. A number of the some 200 poems he produced between 1931 and 1935 appeared in print while he was still a teenager, including one of his best known, And Death Shall Have No Dominion, the first he had published, in May 1933, in a national journal. While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Thomas; they married in 1937 and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy Thomas, and Colm.
He came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer difficult. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him to a wider public's attention, and he was frequently featured by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene. Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950s; his readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on 9 November, and his body was returned to Wales. On 25 November, he was interred at St. Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.
Appraisals of Thomas's work have noted his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery. Further appraisals following on from new critical editions of his poems The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition. Ed. with Introduction and annotations by John Goodby. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014 have sought to explore in more depth his unique modernist poetic, setting aside the distracting legend of the "doomed poet", and seeking thereby to emphasise his status as a major poet of the 20th century. (2026). 9781789149326, Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781789149326
The red-brick, semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the Uplands area), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.
At the 1921 census, Nancy and Dylan are noted as speaking both Welsh and English.1921 census return for 5 Cwmdonkin Drive at FindmyPast. Their parents were also bilingual in English and Welsh, and Jack Thomas taught Welsh at evening classes. One of their Swansea relations has recalled that, at home, "Both Auntie Florrie and Uncle Jack always spoke Welsh."Barbara Treacher, a Swansea cousin, in . There are three accounts from the 1940s of Dylan singing Welsh hymns and songs, and of speaking a little Welsh.
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. His middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarianism minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. The name Dylan being pronounced in Welsh caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the "dull one". When he broadcast on Welsh BBC early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas later favoured the typical anglicised pronunciation and gave instructions that it should be pronounced that way (the same as Dillon ).
Thomas's four grandparents played no part in his childhood. For the first ten years or so of his life, Thomas's Swansea aunts and uncles helped with his upbringing. These were his mother's three siblings, Polly and Bob, who lived in the St Thomas district of SwanseaFor more on Polly and Bob in Swansea, see . They moved to Blaencwm near Llansteffan in 1927/28. and Theodosia, and her husband, the Rev. David Rees, in Newton, Swansea, where parishioners recall Thomas sometimes staying for a month or so at a time.For more on David and Theodosia Rees and Thomas's stays with them, see , and , in which a parishioner notes "He'd stay for perhaps three weeks or a month there...And there wouldn't be his sister or mother or father. He'd often be there alone..." Kent Thompson has provided a similar account of Thomas holidaying with David and Theodosia Rees in Newton, "where he played in the chapel alley and waded in the muddy, unpaved streets." (K. E. Thompson (1965), Dylan Thomas in Swansea, pp. 62–63, Ph.D., University College of Swansea.) All four aunts and uncles spoke Welsh and English.
Thomas's childhood also featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire.Thomas, David N. "A True Childhood: Dylan's Peninsularity" in , and online at Dylan and his aunties. In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them.The main cluster of Williams farms included Waunfwlchan, Llwyngwyn, Maesgwyn, Pentowyn, Pencelli-uchaf and Penycoed. For more on both Thomas's farmyard and Swansea aunts, see Dylan and his aunties The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim Jones, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem "Fern Hill", but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, The Peaches. Thomas also spent part of his summer holidays with Jim's sister, Rachel Jones,Jim and Rachel's parents had farmed Pentrewyman from at least 1864. For more on Jim Jones, including a family tree, see three essays at Jim Jones and Pentrewyman at neighbouring Pentrewyman farm, where he spent his time riding Prince the cart horse, chasing pheasants and fishing for trout.Information from May Bowen, the Pentrewyman farm girl, and from two schoolboy friends, William Phillips and Tudor Price, about Thomas's time at Pentrewyman can be found in .
All these relatives were bilingual, and many worshipped at Smyrna chapel in Llangain where the services were always in Welsh, including Sunday School which Thomas sometimes attended.Interviews with Thomas's schoolboy friends in Llangain in . There is also an account of the young Thomas being taught how to swear in Welsh. His schoolboy friends recalled that "It was all Welsh—and the children played in Welsh...he couldn't speak English when he stopped at Fernhill...in all his surroundings, everybody else spoke Welsh...". But also see the comment from May Bowen, the farm girl at Pentrewyman, that Thomas, Nancy and their parents always spoke English at Pentrewyman (p. 48). At the 1921 census, 95% of residents in the two parishes around Fernhill were Welsh speakers. Across the whole peninsula, 13%—more than 200 people—spoke only Welsh.1921 Census Summary Tables, National Library of Wales.
A few fields south of Fernhill lay Blaencwm,Blaencwm stood on a country lane just off the main road from Llangain to Llansteffan. It was just a short walk up the lane to his aunts and cousins in Llwyngwyn and Maesgwyn farms. a pair of stone cottages to which his mother's Swansea siblings had retired,Polly, Theodosia and Bob in 1927/28. and with whom the young Thomas and his sister, Nancy, would sometimes stay.For more on Blaencwm and Thomas's visits there, see , as well as Thomas's letters from Blaencwm in , the first being on 17 September 1933. His first mention of Blaencwm is in his letter to Nancy sent about 1926. A couple of miles down the road from Blaencwm is the village of Llansteffan, where Thomas used to holiday at Rose Cottage with another Welsh-speaking aunt, Anne Williams, his mother's half-sisterFlorence's father, George Williams, was also Anne's father. For more on this, see pp. 42, 182–185 and 290, in Thomas, D. N. (2003), Dylan Remembered 1914–1934, Seren, and also Note (ii) at Dylan and his Ferryside aunts and uncles Anne, her second husband Robert and Anne's daughter, Doris, are noted as Welsh speakers on their 1921 census return. who had married into local gentry.Anne's first marriage had been to John Gwyn of Cwrthyr Mansion, Llangain. For more on the Gwyns of Cwrthyr, and on Anne's marriage and children with John Gwyn, see D. N. Thomas, ed. (2004), Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, vol. 2, pp. 21–23, Seren. After Gwyn's death in 1893, Anne married Robert Williams and they lived in Rose Cottage. According to the Llansteffan barber, Ocky Owen, Thomas "used to come here every summer, and father and mother – and his sister...they stayed with some relation...Mrs Anne Williams...his holiday was fixed here...they stayed here – for about three weeks or a month...visiting Fernhill and places from here..." Anne's daughter, Doris, has noted that Thomas was "quite a little boy" when he came to stay in Rose Cottage. By the 1921 census, Anne, Robert and Doris had left Rose Cottage and were living in Ferryside. For more on both Anne, and on Thomas's holidays in Llansteffan, see . Anne's daughter, Doris, married a dentist, Randy Fulleylove. The young Dylan also holidayed with them in Abergavenny, where Fulleylove had his practice.See the interview with Doris and Randy in . Doris and Randy lived in Abergavenny between 1929 and 1931 above the practice at 11, Brecon Road. (AncestryLibrary.com online, British Phone Books 1880–1984.)
Thomas's paternal grandparents, Anne and Evan Thomas, lived at The Poplars in Johnstown, just outside Carmarthen. Anne was the daughter of William Lewis, a gardener in the town. She had been born and brought up in Llangadog,See Born in Llangadog as had her father, who is thought to be "Grandpa" in Thomas's short story A Visit to Grandpa's, in which Grandpa expresses his determination to be buried not in Llansteffan but in Llangadog.William Lewis was living with the Thomases at The Poplars at the 1881 census.(FindmyPast online.) He died there on 20 February 1888 and was buried in Llangadog on 23 February 1888 (Parish registers). For more, see Llangadog relatives.
Evan worked on the railways and was known as Thomas the Guard. His family had originated in another part of Welsh-speaking Carmarthenshire, in the farms that lay around the villages of Brechfa, Abergorlech, Gwernogle and Llanybydder, and which the young Thomas occasionally visited with his father. His father's side of the family also provided the young Thomas with another kind of experience; many lived in the towns of the South Wales industrial belt, including Port Talbot,See online at Port Talbot aunt and uncles? PontarddulaisBoth Thomas's mother and father had relatives in Pontardulais. See Deric M. John and David N. Thomas (2010), From Fountain to River: Dylan Thomas and Pontardulais, in Cambria, Autumn, and online at Dylan Thomas and Pontardulais and Cross Hands.
Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother, Florence, and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, becoming skilled in gaining attention and sympathy. But Florence would have known that child deaths had been a recurring event in the family's history,Thomas, D. N. "A True Childhood: Dylan's Peninsularity" in , and online at Dylan Thomas's Llansteffan childhood. and it is said that she herself had lost a child soon after her marriage. If Thomas was protected and spoiled at home, however, the real spoilers were his many aunts and older cousins, those in both Swansea and the Llansteffan countryside."Everybody mothered Dylan. Everybody, even my family mothered Dylan… he played up to it." Barbara Treacher, a Swansea cousin, in . For more on Treacher and her family's Brechfa origins, see . Some of them played an important part in both his upbringing and his later life, as Thomas's wife, Caitlin, has observed: "He couldn't stand their company for more than five minutes... Yet Dylan couldn't break away from them, either. They were the background from which he had sprung, and he needed that background all his life, like a tree needs roots.".
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.Broadcast on 21 March 1945 and reproduced in .
Alongside dame school, Thomas also took private lessons from Gwen James, an elocution teacher who had studied at drama school in London, winning several major prizes. She also taught "Dramatic Art" and "Voice Production", and would often help cast members of the Swansea Little Theatre (see below) with the parts they were playing.Gwen James (1888–1960) on whom see Note 19 in Thomas, D. N. (2003), p. 286, and also p115 on the help she gave Little Theatre cast members. Thomas's parents' storytelling and dramatic talents, as well as their theatre-going interests, could also have contributed to the young Thomas's interest in performance.
In October 1925, Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. There are several accounts by his teachers and fellow pupils of Thomas's time at grammar school. In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death. As a pupil he shied away from the school curriculum, preferring his own choice of reading, drama activities and contributing to the school's magazine of which he became editor.. Thomas's co-editor, Percy Smart, has provided an account of Thomas's work as editor in . Examples of plagiarised poems he published under his own name in the magazine, and in some cases more widely, have been noted by his biographers.Towns, Jeff (2014). "”Borrowed Plumes” - Requiem for a Plagiarist". In Ellis, Hannah (ed.). Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Celebration. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 77-93. Subsequent research has revealed the extent and virtuosity of Thomas's plagiarism, including having a poem published in the nationally read Boy's Own Paper that had been published in the same magazine 15 years before. During his final school years he began writing his distinctively original poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27 April (1930), is entitled "Osiris, come to Isis".
In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, where he remained for some 18 months.See , as well as interviews with Thomas's fellow reporters and other staff in . After leaving the newspaper, Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive. He continued to add to his notebooks, which would eventually comprise over 200 poems in five books compiled between 1930 and 1935. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years. The discovery in 2014 of the fifth notebook containing sixteen poems, compiled between 1934 and August 1935, had substantial implications for the understanding of Thomas's poetic development as well as leading to a revision of the hitherto accepted chronology of composition dates for the poems. (2026). 9781350103832, Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350103832
Painting the sets at the Little Theatre was just one aspect of the young Thomas's interest in art. His own drawings and paintings hung in his bedroom in Cwmdonkin Drive, and his early letters reveal a broader interest in art and art theory.See, for example, his letters to Pamela Hansford Johnson of 11 November 1933 and 15 April 1934. Thomas saw writing a poem as an act of construction "as a sculptor works at stone,"Letter to Hansford Johnson, 15 April 1934. later advising a student "to treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone...hew, carve, mould, coil, polish and plane them..." Throughout his life, his friends included artists, both in Swanseae.g. his friendships with Alfred Janes (painter), Ronald Cour (sculptor), Mervyn Levy (art critic) and Kenneth Hancock (Principal, Swansea Art School). and in London,e.g. his friendships, and sometimes collaboration, with Michael Ayrton, Oswell Blakeston, Mervyn Peake, John Banting, Jankel Adler, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde and Roland Penrose. as well as in America.e.g. Dave Slivka, Loren MacIver and Peter Grippe.
In his free time, Thomas visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's , especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles. (2026). 9781847716934, Y Lolfa. ISBN 9781847716934 In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins and the musician and composer, Daniel Jones with whom, as teenagers, Thomas had helped to set up the "Warmley Broadcasting Corporation".Music, poetry and other material was broadcast along hidden wires by the teenage Thomas and Jones from the upper floor of Jones' home, Warmley, to the floors below. For more on The Warmley Broadcasting Corporation, see D. Jones (1977) My Friend Dylan Thomas, Dent. This group of writers, musicians and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang". This was also the period of his friendship with Bert Trick, a local shopkeeper, left-wing political activist and would-be poet,See , for an overview of their friendship, with an extended interview with Trick in Thomas, D. N. (2003), Dylan Remembered 1914–1934, pp157-174, Seren, as well as an account by Trick's son: Trick, K. (2001) Bert Trick – the Original Marx Brother, New Welsh Review 54. and with the Rev. Leon Atkin, a Swansea minister, human rights activist and local politician.See an interview with Atkin about his friendship with Thomas in Thomas, D. N. (2003), Dylan Remembered (1914–1934), pp. 138–145, vol. 1, Seren, as well as Atkin's entry in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography at Rev. Leon Atkin.
In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.
From 1933 onwards, poet Victor Neuburg edited a section called "The Poet's Corner" in a British newspaper, the Sunday Referee. (2026). 9781913689261, MIT Press. ISBN 9781913689261 Here he encouraged new talent by awarding weekly prizes. One prize went to the then-unknown Thomas, and the publisher of the Sunday Referee sponsored and Neuburg arranged for the publication of Thomas's first book, 18 Poems, in December 1934. The anthology was published by Reginald Caton, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. 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". The volume was critically acclaimed, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. 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.
In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem "The Hand That Signed the Paper" to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse. In 1936, his next collection Twenty-five Poems, published by J. M. Dent, also received much critical praise. Two years later, in 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. During this time Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.
By the late 1930s, Thomas was embraced as the "poetic herald" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. 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". Despite this, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.
In the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930s Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of his holding close links with the ; he was also decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists. Bert Trick has provided an extensive account of an Oswald Mosley rally in the Plaza cinema in Swansea in July 1933 that he and Thomas attended.Per , Thomas mentions attending the rally in his letter of 3 July 1934 to Pamela Hansford Johnson.
For the first months of their relationship and marriage the couple lived at the Macnamara family home in Blashford, Hampshire. In May 1938 they moved to Wales, to the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire where they rented a cottage in Gosport Street before moving into 'Sea View', a larger property, a couple of months later. They left Laugharne in July 1940 and then led a peripatetic lifestyle over the next few years, (2026). 9781789149326, Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781789149326 returning to Blashford and subsequently living at Marshfield (1940), Bishopston (1940–41), Chelsea, in London (1942–43), Talsarn (1942–44), East Knoyle, Beaconsfield (1944), Bosham, Sussex (1944), Blaencwm (Llansteffan) (1944 and 1945), New Quay (1944–45), and in premises arranged by Margaret Taylor, one of Dylan's benefactors (the wife of the historian A. J. P. Taylor), in the grounds of their Oxford home (1946–47) before moving to a property she purchased in the Oxfordshire village of South Leigh (1947–49). Dylan and Cailtin in South Leigh In May 1949, the Thomas family moved back to Laugharne into The Boat House, purchased by Margaret Taylor on their behalf. (2026). 9781789149326, Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781789149326 In 1951 Taylor purchased a second property in Camden Town, North London on their behalf where they stayed from October 1951 - January 1952.Davies, James (1987) Dylan Thomas's Places: A Biographical and Literary Guide. Swansea: Christopher Davies.
Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, Leftover Life to Kill (1957) and My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on their relationship: "Ours was not only a love story, it was a drink story, because without alcohol it would never had got on its rocking feet", she wrote, and "The bar was our altar." Biographer Andrew Lycett describes the relationship as one of alcoholic codependency and notes how deeply Caitlin resented her husband's numerous extramarital affairs.
Dylan and Caitlin Thomas had three children: Llewelyn Edouard (1939–2000), Aeronwy Thomas (1943–2009) and Colm Garan Hart (1949–2012). Llewelyn and Aeronwy were privately educated, at the Magdalen College School, Oxford and at the Arts Education School in Tring, Hertfordshire, respectively.Davies, James (1987) Dylan Thomas's Places: A Biographical and Literary Guide. Swansea: Christopher Davies
At the outset of the Second World War, worried about conscription, Thomas unsuccessfully sought employment in a reserved occupation with the Ministry of Information. However, an “unreliable lung”, as he described his chronic condition – coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus – proved to be the grounds for the military authorities to allocate him a C3 category medical exemption which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service. He would subsequently be recognised as engaged in essential war work through his role in broadcasting for the BBC and documentary film making, work he took up in 1941 after he and Caitlin moved to London, leaving their son with Caitlin's mother at Blashford. Thomas produced film scripts for the Strand Film Company, work which provided him with a much needed financial mainstay throughout the war years and his first regular source of income since working for the South Wales Daily Post.
In February 1941, Swansea Blitz by the Luftwaffe in a "three nights' blitz". Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, 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". Thomas later wrote a feature programme for the radio, Return Journey, which described the café as being "razed to the snow"."Thomas, Dylan." Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature. Gale. 2009. The programme, produced by Philip Burton, was first broadcast on 15 June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.
In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower, one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity. In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy Thomas, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.
In July 1944, with the threat in London of German flying bombs, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing Holy Spring and Vision and Prayer.
In September that year, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay.See Thomas's letters from Majoda, September 1, 1944 to July 5, 1945 in . It was there that Thomas wrote a radio piece about New Quay, Quite Early One Morning, a sketch for his later work, Under Milk Wood.. To read Quite Early... see . Of the poetry written at this time, of note is Fern Hill, started while living in New Quay, continued at Blaencwm in July and August 1945 and first published in October 1945Started writing Fern Hill in New Quay: see ; ; . Further work was done on Fern Hill in July and August 1945 at Blaencwm, the family cottage in Carmarthenshire, Wales. A draft of the poem was sent to David Tennant on August 28, 1945: see . Fern Hill received its first publication in Horizon magazine in October 1945. 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.
Thomas's nine months in New Quay, said first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon, were "a second flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the earliest days…with great outpouring of poems", as well as a good deal of other material. His second biographer, Paul Ferris, agreed: "On the grounds of output, the bungalow deserves a plaque of its own." Thomas's third biographer, George Tremlett, concurred, describing the time in New Quay as "one of the most creative periods of Thomas's life." Walford Davies, who co-edited the 1995 definitive edition of the play, has noted that New Quay "was crucial in supplementing the gallery of characters Thomas had to hand for writing Under Milk Wood."
Thomas continued to work in the film industry after the war, working on feature film scripts which included: No Room at the Inn (1948), The Three Weird Sisters (1948), The Doctor and the Devils (1944 - not produced until 1985) and Rebecca's Daughters (1948 – not produced until 1992). His screenplay for The Beach of Falesá, not produced as a film, received a BBC Radio 3 production in May 2014. Altogether in his work in the film industry Thomas produced 28 film scripts (not all of which reached production) as well as acting as producer and director in some cases. When recession overtook the film industry in the late 1940s he lost his most reliable source of income. The experience he gained in his film work was a significant factor, according to Walford Davies, in the maturation of Under Milk Wood.
In the second half of 1945, Thomas began reading for the BBC Radio programme, Book of Verse, broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished. On 29 September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided opportunities for Thomas. He appeared in the play Comus for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's Agamemnon and Satan in an adaptation of Paradise Lost. Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who regarded him as "useful should a younger generation poet be needed". He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and within Britain was "in every sense a celebrity".
By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A. J. P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, would prove to be Thomas's most committed patron.
The publication of Deaths and Entrances in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator, "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet".
In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas's poems, was his guide and interpreter. In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas "narrated the first version of his radio play Under Milk Wood." She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, mentioning the organist who played for sheep and goats and the baker with two wives.Thomas, D. N. (2004), Dylan Remembered 1934–1953, pp. 160–164 and 295–296, Seren, and also at Milk Wood in Prague. Taken from Hauková's Memoirs: Záblesky života (1996), H&H, Jinočany, and translated at Thomas, D. N. (2004), p. 163. This information about Thomas reading a first version of Under Milk Wood in Prague in March 1949 was first published by FitzGibbon in his 1965 biography of Thomas, after receiving a letter from Hauková: "Thomas then told us the first version of his Milk Wood" (p304). Two others at the party, both of whom had been educated at the English school in Prague, also remember Thomas talking about Under Milk Wood at the party: see Thomas, D. N. (2004), pp. 167, 169–170.
Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on 25 July 1949.
In October, the New Zealand poet, Allen Curnow, came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed and "fished out a draft to show me of the unfinished Under Milk Wood" that was, says Curnow, titled The Town That Was Mad.Curnow, A. (1982) "Images of Dylan" in the NZ Listener, 18 December. This is the first known sighting of the script of the play that was to become Under Milk Wood.For more on this, see .
On returning to Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, "In the white giant's thigh", which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950, and the incomplete "In country heaven". In October, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production as Under Milk Wood was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.
Despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities and in January 1951 he went to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, an assignment which Callard has speculatedD. Callard (1998) Dylan Thomas in Iran, New Welsh Review, December. was undertaken on behalf of British intelligence agencies.For an extensive discussion of Thomas's trip to Iran, including his supposed but unproven connections to MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies, see Thomas, D. N. (2000), A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, ch. 6, The Spying Seren. Thomas toured the country with the film crew, and his letters home vividly express his shock and anger with the poverty he saw around him. He also gave a reading at the British CouncilFor an account of this reading, see . and talked with a number of Iranian intellectuals, including Ebrahim Golestan whose account of his meeting with Thomas has been translated and published.Golestan, Ebrahim (2022) An Encounter with Dylan Thomas, Mage Publishers, edited and translated by Abbas Milani. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time in Iran allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary Persian Oil. Thomas' journey through Iran has also been the subject of the 2024 documentary film Pouring Water on Troubled Oil. The film was written and directed by Nariman Massoumi, Department of Film and Television at the University of Bristol, with narration by Michael Sheen.
Later that year, Thomas published two poems, which have been described as "unusually blunt." They were an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father, Do not go gentle into that good night, and the ribald Lament.Both were published in Botteghe Oscure. See W. Davies and R. Maud eds. (1993) Collected Poems 1934–1953, pp. 255–256.
Although he had 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 T. S. Eliot. Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas would describe the flat as his "London house of horror" and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America. (2026). 9780141901596, Penguin. ISBN 9780141901596
A shortened version of the first half of The Town That Was Mad was published in Botteghe Oscure in May 1952, with the title Llareggub. A Piece for Radio Perhaps. Thomas had been in Laugharne for almost three years, but his half-play had made little progress since his time living in South Leigh. By the summer of 1952, the half-play's title had been changed to Under Milk Wood because John Brinnin thought the title Llareggub would not attract American audiences. On 6 November 1952, Thomas wrote to the editor of Botteghe Oscure to explain why he hadn't been able to "finish the second half of my piece for you." He had failed shamefully, he said, to add to "my lonely half of a looney maybe-play".
On 10 November 1952 Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, was published by Dent; he was 38. It won the William Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that "Thomas is the greatest living poet in the English language". The winter of 1952/3 brought much personal tragedy: Thomas's father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952; and in the Spring of 1953 his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons overdosed, three friends died at young ages and Caitlin had an abortion.
During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Stravinsky who had become an admirer after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a "musical theatrical work" for which Thomas would provide the libretto on the theme of "the rediscovery of love and language in what might be left after the world after the bomb." The letters Stravinsky sent to Thomas during this period testify not only to the composer's sustained interest in bringing the projected opera to fruition but also to the friendship and affection that developed between them, which in turn fueled their shared excitement about a project they envisioned as both artistically ambitious and urgently attuned to the anxieties of their time. (The Opera that Never Was) The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his In Memoriam Dylan Thomas for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley. (1992). 9780413454614, Lime Tree. ISBN 9780413454614
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. 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.
After returning home, Thomas worked on Under Milk Wood in Laugharne. Aeronwy, his daughter, noticed that his health had "visibly deteriorated...I could hear his racking cough. Every morning he had a prolonged coughing attack...The coughing was nothing new but it seemed worse than before." She also noted that the blackouts that Thomas was experiencing were "a constant source of comment" amongst his Laugharne friends.
Thomas sent 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. Thomas flew to the States on 19 October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record Under Milk Wood.Nicola Soames, CD notes from Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood, Naxos Audiobooks. Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.
While waiting in London before his flight, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on Under Milk Wood. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, "terrible" coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing. There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton, a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.Both the Burton and MacNeice blackouts are reported by Burton in .
Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953 to undertake further performances of Under Milk Wood, organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York but remained in Boston to write. He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self: "He was very ill when he got here." After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Hotel Chelsea, Thomas took the first rehearsal of Under Milk Wood. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.
The next day, Reitell invited him to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, 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, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.
The following day, 24 October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections and Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards. "This circus out there," he told a friend who had come back-stage, "has taken the life out of me for now." Reitell later said that Feltenstein was "rather a wild doctor who thought injections would cure anything."
At the next performance on 25 October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill: "He was desperately ill…we didn't think that he would be able to do the last performance because he was so ill…Dylan literally couldn't speak he was so ill…still my greatest memory of it is that he had no voice."
On the evening of 27 October, Thomas attended his 39th birthday party but felt unwell and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in Poetry and the Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.
A turning point came on 2 November. Smog in New York had risen significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas's. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog. On 3 November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record!" The barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount.
Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Ruthven Todd on 4 November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill and postponed the engagement. Todd thought he sounded "terrible". The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded "bad". Thomas's voice, recalled Breit, was "low and hoarse". He had wanted to say: "You sound as though from the tomb", but instead he told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.
Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection (a Tropic hormone Peptide produced and secreted by the anterior pituitary gland) and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate. This amount was three times more than was medically appropriate and was, by affecting Thomas's breathing and consequently the oxygen supply to his brain, the precipitating cause of the coma from which he would never awake. After Reitell became increasingly concerned and telephoned Feltenstein for advice he suggested she get male assistance, so she called upon the painter Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on 5 November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance.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. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.
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". Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, C.G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of 6 November, some 36 hours after Thomas's admission.
Caitlin, having flown from Britain, arrived at the hospital the following morning, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her first words are reported to have been, "Is the bloody man dead yet?" Permitted to see Thomas for a short time, she returned, drunk, in the afternoon and made threats to John Brinnin. Feltenstein had her put into a straitjacket and committed to the River Crest Sanitarium.
It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema and asthma before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, Death by Neglect, D. N. Thomas and former GP Principal Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma. Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude: "The medical notes indicate that, on admission, Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung fields, both left and right." The forensic pathologist, Bernard Knight, who examined the post-mortem report, concurs: "death was clearly due to a severe lung infection with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia...the severity of the chest infection, with greyish consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia, suggests that it had started before admission to hospital.". See also .
Thomas died at noon on 9 November, having never recovered from his coma. A nurse, and the poet John Berryman, were present with him at the time of death.The presence of both the nurse and Berryman are mentioned in , and in , who also provide the nurse's name.
The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography Dylan Thomas in America cemented Thomas's reputation as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet"; (2026). 9780708319536, University of Wales Press. ISBN 9780708319536 Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer. Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? writes that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable. Ferris in his 1989 biography references 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. Whilst his heavy alcohol consumption is seen as a contributory factor to his final illness, Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Likewise Constantine Fitzgibbon, his first biographer and friend, who was personally familiar with Thomas's drinking habits, notes that though there were multiple episodes of excessive alcohol consumption, there were also lengthy periods of relative abstinence.
Thomas's body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Thomas's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on 24 November. Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.
Though Thomas died Intestacy, with assets worth £100, substantial royalties would accrue from sales of his work, with half the proceeds allocated to Caitlin and half to the three children. A trust was established to administer the estate and protect the copyright of Thomas's work. Trustees included Daniel Jones, Wynford Vaughan Thomas and, in an unlikely development given his low opinion of Thomas, Kingsley Amis, who was appointed at the behest of the Thomas family solicitor and administrator of the trust, Stuart Thomas. After Caitlin, troubled by painful memories, left Laugharne to live in Italy, the Thomas family home, the Boathouse, became the home of her mother-in-law, Florence, for the last five years of her life. It was subsequently purchased by the trust from Margaret Taylor on behalf of Caitlin who sold it on to an educational charity before it was eventually acquired by Carmarthenshire County Council and opened to the public as a tourist attraction.Lorraine Scourfield (1992) The Boat House Laugharne. Sandersfoot: Alan Shepherd Publishing. p.26
Caitlin Thomas died in 1994 and was buried alongside her husband's grave. 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 younger son, Colm, in 2012.
Thomas took his major theme as the unity of all life in which the turmoil of sexuality and death linked the generations, envisaging men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Thomas derived his imagery from sources which include the new scientific accounts of physiology and sexuality, the Bible, Welsh folklore, and Sigmund Freud as well as from the established literary canon. (2026). 9781783169634, University of Wales press. ISBN 9781783169634
Whereas earlier appraisals of his work have found an impasse in its obscurity : "The age was fond of explicating obscure poetry; the poetry of Thomas was so obscure that no one could explicate it.” more recent accounts have given readings which have explored in depth the complexity of Thomas's allusions, accepting that obscurity, paradox and ambiguity are integral to his work.Goodby, J.(2017) Discovering Dylan Thomas: A Companion to the Collected Poems and Notebook Poems. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. p. 15 As 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”.Ferris, Paul (ed.) (2017), Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters, Introduction by Paul Ferris. Vol I: 1931–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p.122 (Letter dd. 14 March 1934)
Distinguishing features of Thomas's early poetry include its verbal density, use of alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, with some critics detecting the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Walford Davies suggests there is little else than “a coincidence of poetic temperament.” Thomas himself wrote to Henry Treece, who had compared the two, denying any significant influence. Thomas also employed fixed verse form, such as in the villanelle "Do not go gentle into that good night".
Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings. 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.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." (). Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by poet Roy Campbell. notes that in a BBC Home Service programme aired in 1950, Poetic Licence, 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". Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as "The Orchards", which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion."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. Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in "Fern Hill", "In Country Sleep", "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" and "In the White Giant's Thigh".
In 1951, in response to an American student's question, Thomas alluded to the formative influence of the nursery rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:
Thomas became 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. His first published prose work, After the Fair, appeared in The New English Weekly on 15 March 1934. (2026). 9781578631285, Weiser Books. ISBN 9781578631285 Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies: vigorous fantasies in a poetic style and, after 1939, more straightforward narratives. 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.
Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to [[Stephen Spender]] in 1952, thanking him for a review of his ''Collected Poems'', he added "Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh." Despite this his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that "His inspiration and imagination were rooted in his Welsh background". Caitlin Thomas wrote that he worked "in a fanatically narrow groove, although there was nothing narrow about the depth and understanding of his feelings. The groove of direct hereditary descent in the land of his birth, which he never in thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."
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. 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." 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. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote "No major English poet has ever been as Welsh as Dylan".
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". 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." 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". Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine Wales, Thomas's father wrote that he was "afraid Dylan isn't much of a Welshman". Though FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.
Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. 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." 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." 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". Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in his work, and claiming that he was 'frothing at the mouth with piss.' In 1956, the publication of the anthology New Lines featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin among 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."
Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and he is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public. In 2009, more than 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th. Several of his poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers. The BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs, in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording. John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. Goodby also cites that, despite a brief period during the 1960s when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, 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", his work failing to fit standard narratives and thus being ignored rather than studied. In June 2022, Thomas was the subject of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.
Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas, by John Doubleday. 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 cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from "Fern Hill".
Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. His writing shed is also preserved. In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival. In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of "Fern Hill".
In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who in 2013 made a recording of "Fern Hill" for National Poetry Day.
In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on Under Milk Wood and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work. The same year, Thomas was among the ten people commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in their "Remarkable Lives" issue.
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