Book Description

The renowned literary biographer offers a “thoroughly well-written” chronicle of the legendary Welsh poet’s life that is “rich in anecdote” (The New Yorker). Dylan Thomas is as legendary for his raucous life as for his literary genius. The author of the immortal poems Death Shall Have No Dominion, Before I Knocked, and Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, as well as the short story A Christmas in Wales, and the “play for voices” Under Milk Wood, published his first book, 18 Poems, in 1934, when he was only twenty years old. When he died in New York in 1953, at age thirty-nine, the myths took hold: he became the Keats and the Byron of his generation—the romantic poet who died too young, his potential unfulfilled. Making masterful use of original material from archives and personal papers, Andrew Lycett describes the development of the young poet, brings valuable new insights to Thomas’s poetry, and unearths fascinating details about the poet’s many affairs and his tempestuous marriage to his passionate Irish wife, Caitlin. The result is a poignant yet stirring portrait of the chaos of Thomas’s personal life and a welcome re-evaluation of the lyricism and experimentalism of his literary legacy. “This is the best biography of the poet I have ever read.” —Robert Nye, The Scotsman