The Strange Plagiarism Case of Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet and author best known for his poems Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion.

He nurtured a reputation as a “roistering, drunken and doomed poet”, a reputation he seemingly fulfilled when he died in 1953 while on tour in America. He was just 39 years old at the time.

However, his legend did not pass with him. If anything, it only grew. In 2014, a number of events were held to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of his birth and his birthplace, Swansea, has both a permanent exhibition of his work and an annual festival in his honor.

According to an article by Steve Duffy at the BBC, author and publisher Alessandro Gallenzi and his editor, Alex Middleton, sought to publish a new collection of Thomas’ poems. To do this, they gained access to one of two known complete collections of Thomas’ school literary magazine. They began transcribing Thomas’ schoolboy poems and then made a surprising discovery.

According to Gallenzi, who published his findings in the Times Literary Supplement, at least 12 of the poems Thomas published at school were someone else’s work. All totaled, Gallenzi felt that the number could be as high as “20 to 24.”

Most of the plagiarized poems were published in the school’s literary magazine. However, at least one poem was published in the national publication Boy’s Own Paper. The poem he plagiarized for that magazine had been published in the same publication 15 years earlier. A move that Gallenzi described as “audacious.”

But what does this discovery of century-old plagiarism mean for Thomas’ legacy? Probably not much.

A Bizarre Case for a Bizarre Poet

Two things are abundantly clear in this story. First, Thomas committed widespread plagiarism as a student and published at least a dozen, probably significantly more, plagiarized works.

Second, Thomas would go on to find his voice and publish a much larger collection of original poetry, some of which would become some of the best-known English-language poems of all time.

While I would not expect anyone to be the same person they were in school, especially since Thomas first began publishing at age 11, it is still a significant turn of events.

Gallenzi points to several factors that may have caused Thomas to commit plagiarism. He cites Thomas’ desire to impress both his fellow students and his father, who was an English teacher at the school. But that doesn’t explain how or why he made the transition from repeated plagiarist to world-class original poet.

Obviously, the only person who can speak to this directly is Thomas himself, and that is not possible. As Jason Chu at Turnitin once said, “Plagiarism is about putting outcomes ahead of processes.” Student Thomas clearly did that. Why did it change?

Did he gain confidence in his own work? Did he develop a genuine passion for poetry that wasn’t there before? Or was it something else? We have no way of knowing.

Simply put, most plagiarists don’t make this kind of turnaround. Once someone decides that plagiarism is ethically acceptable, they usually continue plagiarizing until they are caught or leave the space on their own accord. Very few change on their own.

That’s what makes Thomas’ case such a fascinating one to study. Not only did he change on his own, but his second act made him one of the most noted poets of all time.

A Different Perspective

As many know, I first became interested in plagiarism about 25 years ago when I discovered my work, namely poetry and short stories, being widely plagiarized online.

Most of that plagiarism occurred on forums, poetry community sites, and similar public spaces on the nascent internet. However, semi-regularly, I would find it in the online edition of a school’s literary magazine.

To be clear, I never sought to have students punished; I just wanted the online edition corrected or removed. In most cases, the issue was moot as the student had already graduated or otherwise left the school by the time I discovered the plagiarism. (This was because, at the time, most school literary magazines were transcribing previous editions to their sites.)

One of the first things I thought when I read about this story was that Thomas, or at least someone like him, could have been one of those students. How would it have changed literary history if this plagiarism had been uncovered in its time?

Obviously, we can’t know. But this does highlight something that tends to get forgotten when discussing plagiarism in schools. Schools need to be places where students can learn, and learning means letting students make mistakes.

Though I’m clearly not going to come out in favor of ignoring plagiarism in schools, and saying that, if Thomas had been caught, there shouldn’t have been any repercussions. But there needs to be a balance in the response. The primary goal of a school should be to teach, not to punish.

If I did run across anyone like Dylan Thomas in my early days of plagiarism fighting, and they were reprimanded, my hope is that, while it would be treated with some seriousness, it wouldn’t result in them abandoning writing.

Thomas’ story reminds us why this balance is necessary. Students who make mistakes, even serious ones, may still be capable of great things. Writing them off, especially at an early age, doesn’t serve their growth or improvement.

Bottom Line

If Dylan Thomas were alive, he would be someone I would be desperate to talk to. Understanding his (seemingly self-motivated) change could help prevent many other students from making the same mistakes.

However, all of this came to light roughly a century after it happened. Gallenzi has decided to place the plagiarized poems in the appendix of the new collection. This is a reasonable step. The works themselves are almost certainly public domain, and ignoring them doesn’t feel right, especially since they may have been formative for Thomas.

Still, this is likely to be nothing but a footnote in Thomas’ legacy. These are not his most important works; in fact, most have never been published outside the literary magazine. He was a young student at the time, and it appears to have no bearing on his later works.

In short, I think of this case as an oddity. It’s definitely something that should be studied and better understood, but not something that should or will have much bearing on Thomas’ reputation moving forward.

As a student, Thomas made some very serious mistakes. Many students do. Somewhere along the way, Thomas pivoted, and the literary world is better for it. Sometimes, how the story ends is more important than how it begins. This is clearly one of those times.