Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas was born on October 27, 1914 in Swansea, Wales. Thomas’ father was a professor of English Literature at the Swansea Gramma School who had a habit of reciting Shakespeare at home, which instilled in the young Thomas an early love of poetry. When Dylan Thomas was 16 years old, he dropped out of school and became a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, where he worked for 18 months before deciding to move to London to focus on writing poetry. He wrote more than half of his collected poems during this time, and the 1934 publication of his poem “Light breaks where no sun shines” in The Listener received much critical acclaim. That same year, Thomas won the Sunday Referee’s Poet’s Corner Prize, which sponsored the publication of his first volume of poetry, 18 Poems, in December 1934. Shortly after the publication of 18 Poems, Thomas met his wife, dancer Caitlin Macnamara, at a London pub. They were married in 1937 and would have three children together. The couple settled in London in 1940, though they left in 1944 to avoid the air raids. Thomas worked as a professional broadcaster and scriptwriter for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) between 1943 and 1953 and was involved in the creation of over 100 radio broadcasts. One such broadcast, Quite Early One Morning, which first aired in August 1945, features characters and ideas that would resurface in Under Milk Wood. Thomas and his family split their time between London and Wales until 1949, when they moved to Thomas’ final home in Laugharne, Wales, where they lived at the Boat House, a house nestled in the cliffs overlooking the River Tâf. Thomas wrote many of his later works at the Boat House, including parts of Under Milk Wood. Thomas traveled to the United States for the first time in 1950, when he was 35 years old. In the last years of his life, he conducted a series of four reading tours across the country, and his engaging poetic delivery, dramatic demeanor, and raucous drinking delighted his American audiences During his last tour, which took place in 1953, Thomas collapsed at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City after a long evening of drinking. He died on November 9, 1953, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, and he was buried in Laugharne, Wales.