Dylan Thomas

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 Macnamara; they married in 1937 and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy, 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 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.