About the Collection

Born in Swansea, Wales, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century and also the author of numerous short stories, radio scripts, and plays. His publications include The Map of Love (1939), Portrait of the Artist As a Young Dog (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1946), Collected Poems, 1934-1952 (1952), The Doctor and the Devils (1953) and Under Milk Wood (1954).

The Dylan Thomas Collection contains five holograph poetry notebooks (1930-1951); a prose notebook of ten short stories (1933-1934); holograph and typed manuscripts, many with corrections, for such works as The Doctor and the Devils (1953); a film script of Life in a Girl’s Reform School; corrected or fragmentary versions of over a dozen individual poems including "Do not go gentle into that good night," "Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait" and "Fern Hill"; approximately 81 items of correspondence including Thomas’ letters to Henry Treece, Trevor Hughes, Donald Taylor and Pamela Hansford Johnson (Lady Snow); three diaries of Pamela Hansford Johnson (Lady Snow) 1933-1935; and two 1953 portraits of Thomas painted by Gordon Stuart.

The ten photographs featured here are from Thomas’s trip to New York shortly before his death on November 9, 1953.