DYLAN THOMAS

A new look at the preeminent Welsh poet.

In the latest in the Critical Lives series, Goodby and Wigginton, Thomas scholars at Sheffield Hallam University, offer a brisk but comprehensive look at the life of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), eschewing the popular image of a “rumpled, Dionysiac…summoner of elemental powers” in favor of a more nuanced portrait of a driven, focused writer who had penned a dozen “masterpieces” by the time he was 19-and-a-half. The book moves confidently through Thomas’ upbringing in a “middling prosperous” suburb of Swansea, his grammar school education, and his complicated relationship with his father, D.J., who named his son after a character in a Welsh medieval tale. From there we progress to the poet’s early adulthood, and the authors make note of both Thomas’ periods of intense productivity and his ambition; after his first collection, 18 Poems, was published in 1934 to not insignificant acclaim, Thomas wanted to build on its success “as quickly as possible,” and Twenty-Five Poems was published less than two years later. In between the two collections, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara, whom he would marry. Next, the authors address World War II and its effect on Thomas, as well as his work making wartime documentaries for Strand Films, concluding with the poet’s four tours of America in the early 1950s before his untimely death at the age of 39. This slim volume ably summarizes the events of the poet’s life, but where it “fill[s] a gap” is in the “critically informed attention” it pays to Thomas’ writing, offering close reads of many of the poems and the “puns, wordplay and rhetorical devices” he employed. “The life is read in the light of [Thomas’] work, rather than the other way around,” the authors write.

An engaging biography that foregrounds critical analysis of Thomas’ writings.