How Green Was My Valley Richard Llewellyn HB 1943


How Green Was My Valley is a novel of 1939, by the author Richard Llewellyn. The author's claims to have based it on his own knowledge of the Gilfach Goch area were proven false, as Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales, but gathered his facts from conversations with local mining families.[1] The title of the novel is taken from its last sentence: How green was my valley then, and the valley of them that have gone.

The novel is set in Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria. It tells the story of the Morgans, a poor but respectable mining family of the South Wales valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan. Huw's academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment. His five brothers and his father are miners; after the eldest brother, Ivor, is killed in an industrial accident, Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, with whom he has always been in love. Later, Huw's father is also killed in the mine. Meanwhile, one of Huw's three sisters, Angharad, gets married to a wealthy coal-owner whom she doesn't love and the marriage is an unhappy one. She never overcomes her clandestine relationship with the local minister. After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, he decides to leave as well, and tells us the story of his life just before he does.

• This great novel was later made into a movie of the same name that won an Oscar as best Movie in 1941