SOURCE: “The Structure of Early Prose,” in Dylan Thomas’ Early Prose: A Study in Creative Mythology, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970, pp. 30-51.

In the following essay, Pratt focuses on Thomas's early fiction, and applies Jungian psychology to determine the author's mental state when the stories were written.

I

Dylan Thomas never typed his own stories for submission to periodicals, but he would copy the finished version in careful handwriting into the Red Notebook, from which he would dictate to a friend. Reading aloud was as important for the prose as for the poetry, and many stories were tried out before a group of friends during the Wednesday lunch hour in Swansea. In the same manner “The Enemies,” “The Visitor,” “The Orchards,” “The Mouse and the Woman,” and “The Burning Baby” were read aloud, mainly during 1934, to Pamela Hansford Johnson.¹

Although from 1934 on many of the tales were published...