DYLAN THOMAS

BY:SURAYA BINTI SAAIDINNUR AIN SUZIANIE BINTI CHE HAMID

BACKGROUND

• Name: Dylan Marlais Thomas

• Born : 27 October 1914 in Uplands, Swansea, Glamorgan,

Wales

• Occupation : Poet and writer

• Spouse : Caitlin Macnamara (1937–1953, his death)

• Children: Llewelyn Edouard Thomas (1939–2000)

Aeronwy Bryn Thomas (1943–2009)

Colm Garan Hart Thomas (1949–2012)

• Died: 9 November 1953 (aged 39) in New York City, United

States

The Early Years of Dylan’s Life.

1914

• October 27: Dylan Marlais Thomas was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Uplands, Swansea. His father, David John Thomas was a Senior English Master at Swansea Grammar School.

• The families of both David Jones and his wife Florence came from Carmarthenshire, and they were fluent Welsh speakers. However, David Jones and Florence followed the convention of the time and did not bring up Dylan and his older sister Nancy Marles Thomas to speak Welsh.

1925

• September: Dylan left Mrs Hole’s ‘Dame School’ in Mirador Crescent, just round the corner from Cwmdonkin Drive, and entered Swansea Grammar School.

Dylan’s Life – The 1930s1930April 27: Dylan started the first of the ‘Notebooks’ into which he copied his early poems. The Notebooks continued until 1934, and the poems in them formed the basis of 18 Poems (1934), Twenty Five Poems (1936) and contributed material to both The Map of Love (1939) and Deaths and Entrances (1946). These early works are collected in The Notebook Poems (edited by Ralph Maud. London: Dent 1989) which is available from the Dylan Thomas Centre.

1931August 31: Dylan left Swansea Grammar School to become a junior reporter on the South Wales Daily Post

1932• Dylan joined Swansea Little Theatre Company. They were based in

Mumbles at the time, and his sister Nancy Thomas was already a member. He acted in a number of plays, including Noel Coward’s Hay Fever.

• December: Dylan left South Wales Daily Post and worked full time on his poetry. He wrote around two thirds of his entire poetic output in his late teens.

• It was during this time that he developed his friendship with Bert Trick, and with the group of talented young Swansea men, Kardomah Gang, named after their favourite café. This group included Vernon Watkins, Daniel Jones, Alfred Janes, John Prichard, Tom Warner, Charlie Fisher and Mervyn Levy.

• “Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;Though lovers be lost love shall notAnd death shall have no dominion”And death shall have no dominion

1933May 18: ‘And Death Shall have No Dominion’ published in New English Weekly – Dylan’s first poem to be published outside Wales

August: Dylan first went to London. He stayed with his sister Nancy and her husband, Haydn Taylor, and visited editors of literary magazinesSeptember: ‘That Sanity Be Kept’ published in the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the Sunday Referee; this is seen by another aspiring young poet, Pamela Hansford Johnson , who writes to Dylan; their correspondence begins.

1934“Light breaks where no sun shines;Where no sea runs, the waters of the heartPush their tides;”Light breaks where no sun shines

April 22: Dylan won book prize of the ‘Poet’s Corner’ which included the Sunday Referee’s sponsorship of his first collection of poems.

November: Dylan took his first lodgings in London at 5 Redcliffe Street, Earls Court, with his Swansea friends, artists Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy.

December 4: Dylan’s first appearance in book form: his poem ‘Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines’ is published in The Year’s Poetry

December 18: Dylan’s first collection, 18 Poems, published jointly by the Sunday Referee and Parton Bookshop

1935May: Dylan stays for a month with Alan (the historian AJP Taylor) and Margaret Taylor at Higher Disley in the Peak District

1936February 21: Second impression of 18 Poems published“From the first print of the unshodden foot, the liftingHand, the breaking of the hair,And to the miracle of the first rounded word”From love’s first fever

September 10: Publication of Twenty-five Poems by J M Dent & Sons Ltd, the fifteenth volume in their New Poetry series“My images stalk the trees and the slant sap’s tunnel.No more tread more perilous, the green steps and spireMount on man’s footfall”I, in my intricate image

1937April 21: Dylan’s first radio broadcast, ‘Life and the Modern Poet’ (BBC Welsh Service), recorded in the BBC’s London studios.

July 11: Dylan and Caitlin married at Penzance Register Office, against the wishes of his parents. Wyn Henderson lent them the £3 needed for the licence, and they stayed at her guest-house, The Lobster Pot in Mousehole, afterwards.

1938“I stand, for this memorial’s sake, aloneIn the snivelling hours with dead, humped AnnWhose hooded, fountain heart once fell in puddlesRound the parched worlds of Wales and drowned each sun”After the funeral

October 18: Dylan took part in ‘The Modern Muse’ BBC Home Service radio broadcast with Louis MacNeice, W H Auden, Kathleen Raine and Stephen Spender

November / April: Dylan and Caitlin stayed at Blashford awaiting the birth of their first baby:

“A saint about to fall,The stained flats of heaven hit and razedTo the kissed kite hems of his shawl”A saint about to fall

1939January 30: Llewelyn Edouard Thomas was born.

“This side of the truthYou may not see, my son,King of your blue eyesIn the blinding country of youth”This side of the truth

December 20: The World I Breathe – a collection of poems and short stories, published in the United States

During his 1940• Dylan and Caitlin left Laugharne to stay in Caitlin's family home at Blashford.

• ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog’ was published.

• Dylan failed Army medical at Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire.

• He had served as an anti-aircraft gunner but was rejected for more active combat due to illness.

• In July, Thomas and his wife moved to London.

• Dylan began working for Strand Films, and his work for Strand continued through the war. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog was published in the United States.

• In July 1942, Fortune Press published second edition of 18 Poems.

• Dylan and Caitlin rented one-room studio at Wentworth Studios, Manresa Road, London SW3, leaving Llewelyn with her family at Ringwood.

• In 1943, Dylan’s continued to work as a broadcaster begins.

• Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, was born on 3 March 1943 in London.

• To avoid the air raids, the couple left London in 1944.

• In September, they moved to Majoda, New Quay, Ceredigion, where Dylan writed several major poems and the radio broadcast ‘Quite Early One Morning’, in which he experimented with the form, characters and ideas that he developed in Under Milk Wood.

• ‘Deaths and Entrances‘ was published by J M Dent & Sons Ltd on February 7.

• The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic W. J. Turner commented in The Spectator "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet".

• Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas published in the United States by New Directions.

• March 26- Society of Authors awarded Dylan a £150 Travelling Scholarship with a recommendation that he should visit Italy.

• April-August: Dylan and Caitlin and her sister Brigid took the family to stay first at Rapallo, then Florence and Elba. In Florence, Dylan writes ‘In Country Sleep’

• June 15- BBC broadcasted his program on the destruction of the Swansea of his youth, ‘Return Journey’.

• During summer 1948, Dylan began to work on his three film scripts for Gainsborough Films – Me and My Bike, Rebecca’s Daughters, and The Beach at Falesa – but the company goes into liquidation before any of the films are made.

• May 1949, Dylan and family move to the Boat House in Laugharne; his parents move to Pelican, a house opposite Brown’s Hotel. In the ‘Prologue’ to his Collected Poems, Dylan calls the Boat House “My seashaken house / On a breakneck of rocks”

• A second son, Colm Garan Hart Thomas, was born on 24 July 1949. 

1950s to Dylan’s death• On February 20, Dylan flew to New York to begin his first tour of the

United States organized by John Malcolm Brinnin.

• In September, Margaret Taylor went down to Laugharne to tell Caitlin that Dylan had an American mistress, Pearl Kazin, and that she had arrived in London. This provoked the first great crisis in their marriage.

• January / February 1951, Dylan visited Persia to write a film script for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; Caitlin writed to him suggesting that the marriage is over.

• Dylan writed ‘Lament’, ‘Poem on His Birthday’, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’, ‘Prologue’ and half of Under Milk Wood in Laugharne.

• January 20 1952, Dylan and Caitlin departed for the United States on board the Queen Mary.

• December 16, D J Thomas died in Laugharne aged 76. He is buried in Pontypridd alongside his brother Arthur after a non-religious ceremony.

• April 16 1953, Dylan’s sister Nancy died of cancer in Bombay.

• April 21, Dylan left for New York to begin his third American tour, and during this tour his affair with Liz Reitell began.

• May 14, the first stage performance of Under Milk Wood in New York with Dylan narrating (recorded by Caedmon)

• August 10, Dylan made his first and only TV appearance for the BBC reading his story ‘The Outing’. Footage of this has never been recovered.

• October 19, Dylan left for New York to begin his fourth and final American tour.

• October 29, Dylan’s last public engagement – a lunchtime reading at the City College of New York.

• November 5, Dylan collapses at the Chelsea Hotel, New York.

• November 9, Dylan died at St Vincent’s Hospital and Caitlin brought his body back to Laugharne.

• 25th November, Dylan’s funeral at Laugharne.

• Dylan's death however, was probably not only a result  of the over-consumption of alcohol.

• A few weeks after the funeral Caitlin leaft Laugharne for Elba, Italy.

• First BBC Broadcast of Under Milk Wood, with Richard Burton starring as First Voice happened on 25th January 1954.

• First publication of Under Milk Wood in book form in May 1954. 13,000 copies were sold in the first month and over 53,000 in the first year.

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References