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A recent investigation into the earliest works of the renowned Welsh poet Dylan Thomas has uncovered that, as a schoolboy, he engaged in plagiarism by copying other poets’ writings and presenting them as his own. This startling revelation came to light through the efforts of Alessandro Gallenzi, an author and publicist, who was editing a new compilation of Thomas’s poetry. According to Gallenzi, the plagiarism was “wholesale” and occurred during Thomas’s time as an avid contributor to Swansea Grammar School’s magazine starting in 1925, when he was just 11 years old.
The discovery stemmed from access to one of only two complete surviving copies of Thomas’s school magazine, owned by Geoff Haden, president of the Dylan Thomas Society. Gallenzi and his editor, Alex Middleton, closely examined and transcribed the poems featured in the publication, only to find that at least a dozen pieces attributed to Thomas were actually lifted from previously published works. “My heart stopped,” Gallenzi recalled upon reaching this conclusion. In total, they identified 12 poems submitted during Thomas’s school years that were not original, and Gallenzi speculated that the actual number might be between 20 and 24.
Among the plagiarised works was a poem titled “His Requiem,” originally credited to D M Thomas of Swansea in the Western Mail in 1927. This piece was actually penned by Lillian Gard and had appeared five years earlier in the Boy’s Own Paper. Gallenzi commented on the audacity of Thomas’s actions, noting that one of the copied poems was even published in Boy’s Own, a nationally circulated magazine, despite being a reproduction of a poem published there 15 years prior. He suggested that the young poet likely believed his readers would not detect the plagiarism.
Reflecting on why Thomas might have resorted to such measures, Gallenzi proposed that insecurity and a desire to gain recognition could have played a role. Thomas had just transferred to a larger school and may have wanted to stand out among his peers. “He started a new, much bigger school and may have been looking to impress,” Gallenzi explained. The presence of Thomas’s father, an English teacher at the school with high expectations for his son, might also have been an influential factor. While Thomas was simultaneously developing his own original poetic voice, the plagiarised poems reveal a youthful ambition and a hint of mischief during his formative years. These works will be preserved in an appendix of the forthcoming collection entitled *Dylan Thomas – The Complete Poems*. The museum at Thomas’s birthplace in Swansea will also display some of these early pieces alongside their original sources. Geoff Haden, the museum curator, was not shocked by the discovery, reasoning that Thomas likely sought “something to show his father and to stop him nagging him about doing homework in other subjects.”
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