When Dylan Thomas was staying in New Quay one winter, he went out early one morning into the still sleeping town and verses came to his mind about the inhabitants. He wrote the account of this as Quite Early One Morning in 1944, and recorded the story for radio in 1945. He continued to work on the idea for eight years and on 9 September 1953 he delivered a full draft of Under Milk Wood to the BBC as he left for a tour of America, intending to revise the manuscript on his return. He read a part of the script in public for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soon after, with others, he sound-recorded a performance at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Two months later he was dead.
The play was recorded by the BBC in 1954 with a distinguished all-Welsh cast and produced by Douglas Cleverdon. Daniel Jones, a composer who was a lifelong friend of Thomas’s, wrote the music for the production. The play was first broadcast (two month after his death) on 25 January 1954, on the BBC Third Programme, and repeated two days later. The recording featured Richard Burton as ’First Voice’.
Dylan Thomas is reported to have commented that Under Milk Wood was developed in response to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as a way of reasserting the evidence of beauty in the world.
