Thomas, Dylan Marlais

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Thomas, Dylan Marlais (1914–53) Welsh poet and short-story writer. A self-styled enfant terrible, whose flamboyant alcoholic lifestyle led to his early death in New York, Thomas was a resonant reader of his own and others' poetry, his public persona contributing to the popularity of his powerful, meticulously crafted, often wilfully obscure verse. His first collection appeared when he was 19 years' old; his Collected Poems was published in 1953. Many of his best short stories appear in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) and Adventures in the Skin Trade (1955). The ‘play for voices’ Under Milk Wood, written in 1952, is perhaps his best-known work.

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