How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley is a
novel of
1939, by
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. 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 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 is secretly 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 didn't love and the marriage is an unhappy one. She never overcame 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.
Main article: How Green Was My Valley (film)
The successful
1941 film of the book had a cast which included
Walter Pidgeon,
Maureen O'Hara,
Anna Lee,
Roddy McDowall (as Huw), and
Barry Fitzgerald. None of the leading players were Welsh.
The 1941 film has been selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry. It should be noted that although highly respected by critics both then and now, the film isn't highly regarded by Ford's fans, this may have something to do with the fact that
How Green Was My Valley competed with
Citizen Kane that year,
a film which many consider the greatest of all time. The book was successfully adapted for
television during the 1970s by the
BBC, with a script by
Elaine Morgan. It starred
Stanley Baker,
Sian Phillips and
Nerys Hughes.
