Thomas was educated at the Swansea Grammar school, but left when he was sixteen and began working for the South Wales Daily Post as a proof reader and junior reporter. It was at this time that Thomas developed a love of alcohol that eventually led to his demise. At the end of 1932, he joined Swansea's Little Theatre, an amateur actors group, and also began to write poetry. Over the next year, many of his poems were published in the London Sunday Referee. During the next two years he made a number of trips to London and published his first book, 18 Poems, in 1934. In 1936, he followed this with his second publication, 25 Poems. In 1937, he married Caitlin MacNamara. Thomas was exempted from military service in 1940 as an asthmatic. During the war years he took part in many BBC radio programmes and continued to write poetry and some radio scripts. In 1947, he moved to Oxfordshire, but returned to Wales in 1948. In 1949, Thomas was offered a lecture tour in America and was enthralled by the country and especially its proliferance of bars. He returned on tour again in 1952 and 1953, where he produced Under Milk Wood. Later that year, and deeply in debt, he agreed to another tour. Following a frenzied drinking bout that, by his own words, included "eighteen straight whiskeys", he was admitted to hospital where he lapsed into a coma and died five days later. There is much conjecture surrounding his death and its causes, which many attribute to incorrect medication being administered to him by US physicians. His body was returned to Wales for burial. Thomas's other works include The Map of Love (1939), The World I Breathe (1939), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1946), Twenty-Six Poems (1950), In Country Sleep (1952) and The Doctor and the Devils (1953). |
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