Richard Llewellyn
Richard Llewellyn, born Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd in 1906 in Wales, is best known for his acclaimed novel *How Green Was My Valley*. His education was somewhat unconventional, involving a mix of learning in St. David's, Cardiff, and London. At sixteen, he was sent to Italy to study hotel management, where he also pursued art and sculpture. Llewellyn's early career included various roles in the film industry, progressing from movie extra to director, while he also wrote for film magazines. His breakthrough came with the publication of *How Green Was My Valley*, which was immensely popular, selling over fifty thousand copies in England and more than one hundred thousand in the United States, and was later adapted into a film.
During World War II, he served in the British army and continued to write afterward, producing subsequent novels including *None but the Lonely Heart*. Despite his earlier success, many of his later works did not achieve the same level of acclaim. Llewellyn's literary contributions span various genres, including romantic novels for younger audiences, reflecting his diverse interests and experiences. His works often draw on his Welsh heritage and personal experiences, making them significant in the context of Welsh literature.
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Subject Terms
Richard Llewellyn
Welsh novelist
- Born: December 8, 1906
- Birthplace: St. David's, Pembrokshire, Wales
- Died: November 30, 1983
- Place of death: Dublin, Ireland
Biography
Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd, who wrote under the name Richard Llewellyn (lew-EHL-ihn), was born in 1906 in that section of Wales which he described so well in his most important novel, How Green Was My Valley. His education, by his own admission, was chaotic, gathered piecemeal in St. David’s, Cardiff, and London. Sent to Italy at the age of sixteen to study the hotel business, he began his apprenticeship in the kitchen. Meanwhile he studied art and sculpture in Venice. While working with an Italian film unit, he began to feel the need for a more solid existence; he was not yet out of his teens when he joined the British army, in which he served five years. During this time he got a taste of world travel, which subsequently became his avocation. {$S[A]Lloyd, Richard David Vivian Llewellyn;Llewellyn, Richard}
Returning to civilian life in 1931, he took a job as a movie extra and then became a writer for a penny film magazine. From these beginnings he rose successively in the motion-picture industry to become assistant director, scenarist, production manager, and finally director. Between periods of making films, he wrote Poison Pen, a melodrama produced in London in 1938; the success of this minor effort started him on his career as a professional writer. His first novel was How Green Was My Valley, the manuscript of which was begun at St. David’s, added to in India, revised in Cardiff, and put into final shape in London. Immensely popular, the novel sold fifty thousand copies in England and twice that number when it was published in the United States the following year. It was filmed in 1941.
During World War II, Llewellyn returned to military life, first as transportation officer in the Entertainment Battalion Services Association, later as a lieutenant in the Welsh Guards. His next novel also showed a change of course; None but the Lonely Heart is the story of a Cockney tough whose mother is blindly devoted to him. After the war Llewellyn divided his time between traveling and writing. He completed a series of novels to follow How Green Was My Valley. In addition to these and Mr. Hamish Gleave, based on the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean behind the Iron Curtain in 1951, he wrote several romantic novels for younger readers as well as other novels of various types that failed to equal the popularity of his earlier works.
Bibliography
Lindberg, Laurie. “Llewellyn and Giardina: Two Novels About Coal Mining.” Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 1 (1989): 133-140. Identifies How Green Was My Valley as a regional novel that presents what is universal about the human character and its condition. Ideas explored include growth from innocence to experience, the individual exploited by industrial power, and loss of “Eden.”
Price, Derrick. “How Green Was My Valley: A Romance of Wales.” In The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction, edited by Jean Radford. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Price’s chapter describes the novel as a romance that “constructs a myth of Wales in order to displace class antagonisms with an appeal to national unity.”