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How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley
HowGreen.jpg
First edition cover
Author Richard Llewellyn
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Historical fiction
Publisher Michael Joseph
Publication date
1939
Media type Print (hardcover)
Pages 651
OCLC 299207
Followed by Up Into the Singing Mountain (1960)

How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, narrated by Huw Morgan, the main character, about his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed that he based the book on his own personal experiences but this was found to be untrue after his death; Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales, though he was of Welsh descent. Llewellyn gathered material for the novel from conversations with local mining families in Gilfach Goch.

The title of the novel appears in two sentences. It is first used in Chapter Thirty, after the narrator has had his first sexual experience. He sits up to "... look down in the valley." He then reflects: "How green was my Valley that day, too, green and bright in the sun." The phrase is used again in the novel's last sentence: "How green was my Valley then, and the Valley of them that have gone."

In the United States, Llewellyn won the National Book Award for favorite novel of 1940, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.

The novel is set in South Wales during the reign of Queen Victoria. It tells the story of the Morgans, a respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys, through the eyes of one of the sons, Huw Morgan.

Huw's academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from the dangerous coal mines. His five brothers and his father are miners. After his eldest brother, Ivor, is killed in a mining accident, Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, with whom he has always been in love.

One of Huw's three sisters, Angharad, marries the wealthy mine owner's son - whom she does not love - and the marriage is an unhappy one. She never overcomes her clandestine relationship with the local minister.

Huw's father is later killed in a mine explosion. After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, and the town is reduced to a contaminated shell, he decides to leave, and tells the story of his life just before going away.

The Older Morgans:

The Middle Brothers: These are Huw's young adult brothers. Ianto goes to London to find work early in the book, but returns unhappily; Owen and Gwilym do the same later.


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