Summary of How Green Was My Valley
“How Green Was My Valley” is a lyrical family saga set in rural Wales during the late 19th century. It chronicles the prosperity brought by the coal mines as well as the devastation inflicted on the lives of miners and the Welsh landscape. The story is told by Huw Morgan, a Welsh boy who grows up in a mining family, and captures his memories of the valley, coloured by nostalgia for his lost youth.
Reasons to read How Green Was My Valley
“How Green Was My Valley” is a classic Welsh tragedy about a mining family in the South Wales Valleys. It became an international bestseller and won the 1940 National Book Award for Favourite Novel. Richard Llewellyn, an English novelist of Welsh descent, later wrote three sequels – “Up, Into the Singing Mountain”, “Down Where the Moon is Small”, and “Green, Green My Valley Now” – set partly in Wales and partly in Argentina. “How Green Was My Valley” was adapted into a Hollywood film in 1941 and a Broadway musical (“A Time for Singing”) in 1966.
Setting: South Wales Valleys (Wales, UK)
“How Green Was My Valley” is set in a fictionalised village inspired by Llewellyn’s conversations with miners from Gilfach Goch, a former coal mining village in south Wales.
Original title: How Green Was My Valley
Year of publication: 1939
Nr of pages: 306
