Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    How Green Was My Valley
    How Green Was My Valley
    How Green Was My Valley
    Audiobook51 minutes

    How Green Was My Valley

    Written by Richard Llewellyn

    Narrated by Walter Pidgeon

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Based in a mining village in Wales at the turn of the 19th century, How Green Was My Valley catches the impossible dilemmas that were created in society's irreversible shift from pastoral to industrial through Huw, the youngest son of seven.

    Loyalty, education, economics and manhood are examined in this pre union tightly knit mining community. Sentimentalised with lots of atmosphere this is a moving account of an important chapter in British history that affects every corner of the world.

    Our Hollywood Stage presentation stars Walter Pidgeon.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Copyright Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781783940479

    Related to How Green Was My Valley

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for How Green Was My Valley

    4/5

    486 ratings31 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans, he stern, she gentle, raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Around the World in Books Challenge: Wales

      I will be visiting Wales in a few weeks so this book was high on my list to finish before my trip (I actually had to make a point of cutting myself off from borrowing books from the library to make sure I finished them all by the time I leave).

      I adored this book. It's the story of Huw Morgan and his life growing up in a rural coal mining village in Wales. He is one of the youngest of his many siblings so he views the events of the book in a somewhat naive way as the people around him go through a host of things, such as strikes at the mine, love and marriage, and other community issues. He is such an endearing character with such spirit.

      This book is also something of a commentary on the environmental impacts of mining. As Huw grows, the hills around him change from a place where he goes hand fishing for trout in the stream, to a place polluted by slag heaps and coal waste.

      I really loved this book, with the simple lives of these characters, and with God really at the center of it all. I look forward to seeing the hills of Wales and remembering this beautiful book and way of life.
    • 5/5
      This is mainly the highlights of the story but you get a good overview of the books events.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful read. I loved the diction. It was distracting at first, but I became used to it after a bit and then it felt like poetry.

      I think that anyone who has had any ties to union disputes and the terrible chaos they cause can understand this story. Particularly anyone who has had family working in manual labor jobs that war somewhat with the environment (such as mining).

      I cried at the end for the beauty and the sorrow and the wonder of the story. I don't cry often at books or movies, so this was not a usual thing for me.
    • 2/5
      I'm afraid I was just glad to finally be done with How Green Was My Valley. It's one of the most popular of the Welsh books I've read -- the one whose popularity has been most enduring, anyway -- and it's hard to understand why, when comparing the cloyingly nostalgic and sentimental story here to the vivacious and real work of Jack Jones and even Caradoc Evans. I guess that's it, though: it's nostalgic and sentimental and it lets the reader feel all weepy about industrialised Wales, without anger or overt political leanings. B.L. Coombes and Lewis Jones weren't mourning for a hopelessly lost past, but arguing in their moment for change, for fairness, for their lives.

      Richard Llewellyn was writing after the fact, I read, based on other people's memories. He didn't live it, so he could afford to look on it with purple-prose tinted glasses. And I wonder how much he came in contact with Welsh Nonconformism, because the chapel was a part of his story but it definitely didn't have the same effect I see even in more modern Welsh work like Emyr Humphreys'.

      So, maybe I would have enjoyed How Green Was My Valley more if I hadn't read it at the same time as I was reading the hard, unshowy works by working class writers who were also miners. It definitely suffered in comparison with the passion of those, and spoke much more to nostalgia. It does capture something of Wales, I think -- parts of it made me feel hiraeth so fiercely -- and parts of the story are compelling, but I don't want to pine after a long-gone Wales. The work of the miner-writers might no longer be relevant, but Wales was very alive to them, and I'd rather spend time with that.
    • 5/5
      There is lovely to read. Richard Llewellyn crafts a lyrical, yearning memoir (one assumes it must be rooted in his experience) of growing up in the Welsh mining valleys around the end of the19th century. The telling can be nostalgic but always seem authentic: the characters in his large family; the strikes and disputes with the mine owners; emigration to the New World as an outlet; solidarity and factionalism in chapelgoing and preaching; the strength and support, the camaraderie in the Valleys community, but also often its narrow-minded rebukes and exclusion; presentiments, sadly, of the Aberfan disaster (slag heaps towering above the village houses). Just as memorable are Llewellyn’s deep, sensual, enveloping descriptions of the touch and feel of things - of one’s pride and solemnity at putting on the first pair of long “trews”, of the vegetables “mixing in warm comfort together” to make a “potch”, of the feel of a kiss, and of why it’s the mouth we use for kissing, not the nose or eyes (still lyrically described, despite the absurdity).
    • 4/5
      One of the first adult books I read when I was growing up. Although I can't recall all the details, I remember it fondly as a warm human story set in a poor coal mining town, and I loved it.
    • 4/5
      This coming-of-age novel narrated by Huw Morgan, youngest son of a family of Welsh miners, paints of picture of Wales in the age of industrialization. The mines, now owned by outsiders who care more about profit than about the lives and welfare of their employees or about the integrity of the land, become less attractive, particularly when strikes yield little or no concessions by those in charge. Most of Huw's siblings move off during the course of the book. One brother dies, and Huw, although attracted to his widow, cannot wed her because of marriage laws. The book tells the story of Huw's education and of his first love as well. The book ends on a sad note. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ralph Cosham.
    • 5/5
      HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, first published in 1939, deserves a comeback. It is a wonderful novel that is almost forgotten nowadays as readers try to keep up with all the novels currently being published. This book came to the United States in 1940 and won the National Book Award for favorite novel that year. The 1941 edition was in my parents’ bookcase for many years before I finally picked it up to read. Before long, I was asking myself, what took me so long, because it could be the best classic I ever read.The story, narrated by Huw Morgan, is about years of his family’s life in a Welsh mining community during the reign of Queen Victoria. As an older man, he has finally decided to leave and is reminiscing. If all coming-of-age tales were this mesmerizing and this touching, I wouldn’t avoid them as I do.Particularly attractive is the English the narrator and other characters use. While the reader is to understand that they are really speaking Welsh, their sentence structure is distinguished from English English. I loved the sound of it the way I love the sound of a Tana French novel.Although Richard Llewellyn’s descriptions of the valley may seem wordy, the reader should understand the necessity of emphasizing its beauty and how mining operations were destroying it. This destruction is the reason Huw is leaving.
    • 5/5
      This melancholic elegy for departed loved ones and the vanished way of life of a Welsh coal mining town is one of the most beautiful books ever written. The narrator, Huw Morgan, tells the story of the lives and loves of his extended family and their townfolk as their closeknit community disintegrates under the pressures of modern life and the decreasing profitability of the mine--from brothers who have to move to America to make a living or others who are killed in the coal pits, to the widowed sister-in-law who Huw loves for years but never tells, to Mr. Gruffudd the local minister who helps Huw through childhood paralysis & becomes his tutor, to Dai Bando who teaches him to box and most of all to the beloved parents who suffer long but love greatly. The language itself is lyrical and haunting, the story ineffably sad. But always, Huw reminds us that these remarkable people live on in him.

      This is the second time I have read this book. The first time I don't think I fully appreciated it as I was 16 years old and was being "forced" to read it for a literature class. I am so glad I gave it another look after I had matured. It is indeed a true classic that is timeless.
    • 4/5
      Richard Llewellyn has an amazing voice. There were so many passages I wanted to quote because they were all just so beautifully written. How Green Was My Valley is told from the first person perspective of Huw Morgan, looking back on his childhood in a small mining town in Wales. Huw comes from a large family of his parents, five brothers and three sisters. They live in an isolated valley in a community governed by the ways of God and the land. As Huw grows older and heads off to school he learns about the uglier side of growing up, like being bullied for being the new kid. After the first day of school Huw's father and brothers teach him how to fight. [As an aside: this surprised me. Growing up with five older brothers, surely Huw would encounter a scuffle or two? It seems so unlikely that the siblings would never fight among themselves.] But, it was the harder lessons Huw learned that were more difficult to swallow: the poverty and starvation during the leaner months, what happens when desire gets out of hand and leads to rape and murder, and the death of a family member.
    • 3/5
      I struggled with this a bit. I had read it before about 30 years ago and think I had the same reaction then. I much preferred the books written by the actual miners of the time such as "Cwmardy" etc. My fellow reading group members loved the writing style and density of sections but I was skipping bits. Not my cup of tea.
    • 5/5
      Lovely writing in this story of a Welsh family in a coal-mining village (I think in the Rhondda valley area altough the author didn't specify) from about 1890 to 1910.While ostensibly about the Morgan family, this novel is documenting the end of an era. I had seen the film but years ago and I was struck when reading this by the similarities to the more recent film "Brassed Off" about the colliery closings in northern England (Yorkshire?) during Margaret Thatcher's time. Different times and places but the same loss of a way of life & the same sense of sadness.Some of Llewellyn's descriptions caught my breath such as this one of Angharad when fighting with 14-year-old Huw:" 'I hate you,' she said, and wrapped her cloak round her so that she was a black pillar, with a white face and her eyes with glitter and shine to make you afraid."Even though I knew the ending, I found myself weeping. It wasn't just the death of Huw's father but the sense of alone-ness with all his brothers gone, one dead and 4 overseas. And the loss of the family home which is being buried by the slag heaps (as the reader knows from the very first page) just makes it all more poignant.
    • 5/5
      SO GOOD. Aghhhhhh
    • 2/5
      I don't usually rate books that I haven't finished, but with Goodreads' new policy regarding reviews I've decided to change my own reviewing & rating policy. This is so that my average rating is a better reflection of my reading, because I don't bother finishing books that I dislike enough to rate lower than a 3 star. There are millions upon millions of books to experience, and life is too precious to waste it slogging through books I'm not enjoying.

      I finished about half the book before abandoning. The characters were interesting, but the plot moved far too slowly. I struggled with the self-righteous, misogynistic, Victorian morality and attitudes. I understand it was the norm for the time period, but I really wanted to kick all the male characters in the teeth.
    • 4/5
      I adored this book. I somehow managed to miss it till just a couple of years ago. The language is lovely, the story well-told. I should read it again. It passed the test, and lives on my shelves. The test? If I wake at 3 am and need to look up a passage, can I wait till the library opens? If no, buy book, add to shelf.
    • 5/5
      The novel is set in Wales in the 1880s and 1890s, during the reign of Queen Victoria and tells the story of the Morgans, a respectable mining family, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw.His five brothers and his father are miners but Huw’s academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment.Oh, what a beautiful book! The countryside, the language, the characters. There is much tragedy, but there is much joy as well. The only complaint I have is the truncated ending- very unsatisfying, and keeps it from earning a perfect 5.Right, you – read this one too. 4½ stars
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book. It is a coming of age story of a Welsh boy growing up at turn of the twentieth century. It is about family, love, friendship, death and unionism and it is written with much affection toward the characters. It reads a bit like a Masterpiece Theater script so if you enjoy those on PBS you will like this book.
    • 5/5
      Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 international best-selling novel, How Green Was My Valley, stands the test of time as a literary classic. He tells the story through narration of the main character, Huw Morgan, of his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The novel is set in South Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria. The story is about the Morgans, a poor but respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys. 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 mining accident, Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, with whom he has always been in love. His further development and how he deals with tragedy makes this an elementally interesting story.The title of the novel appears in two sentences. It is first used in Chapter Thirty, after the narrator has just 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."While I read the book many decades ago when I was a teenager I came to it through first viewing the classic film version of the story. John Ford’s movie based on the novel won the Oscar as best movie of 1941, and I remember my first viewing as it stood out even on our small television screen. Roddy McDowell is the image of Huw Morgan and I remember still the faces of Walter Pigeon and Maureen O'Hara and the beautiful hills and valley. I was moved by the admittedly melodramatic scenes and led inexorably to Llewellen's original.Set in a Welsh coalmining village in the last quarter of the 19th century, its themes of spiritual longing and soaring opposed to physical yearning and bondage are developed in a language that is both lucid and rich in the storytelling tradition. The author delights readers by his incisive observations of quotidian phenomena that, although set in a distant time and place, seem universal in character. This is what it takes to write a novel that transcends generations. This was a melancholic elegy for departed loved ones and the vanished way of life of a Welsh coal mining town and it is one of the most beautiful books that I have ever read.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of a Welsh coal-mining family at about the turn of the Twentieth Century as narrated by the youngest son, Huw Morgan.I felt a great sympathy for Huw and his entire family, in spite of the males' proclivity for fighting - settling scores with their fists.The story was beautiful and poignant. The author's gift of storytelling is obvious. This was a wonderful book altogether.
    • 5/5
      Ah, my little one, such a good book it is.If a sense of place is uppermost in your reading needs, this book delivers. The valleys of Wales come alive through this story of a family who make their living in the coal mines; the breath-taking beauty, then the heart-breaking change as mining scars their landscape. In and out of the sunlight, under the shadow of the trees, into their coolnesses, where leaf mould was soft with richness and held a whispering of the smells of a hundred years of green that had grown and gone, through the lanes of wild rose that were red with blown flower, up past the flowering berry bushes, through the pasture that was high to the knees, and clinging, and that hissed at us with every step, up beyond the mossy rocks where the little firs made curtseys, and up again, to the briars, and the oaks, and the elms, where there was peace, and the sound of grasshoppers striking their flints with impatience, and birds playing hide and seek, and the sun blinding hot upon us, and the sky, plain bright blue.This is the story of a large, close, family living in the time of Queen Victoria; their relationships, growing up, education, illnesses and deaths, home life and livelihood, … and song - all of it rich in detail. Huw Morgan prepares to leave his home of 50 years, all relatives having passed on, and the house overtaken by slag. With that ugly backdrop, the beauty of his memories of the valley of his youth fuel the story.5 stars for character, setting, story, and writing all.
    • 5/5
      A few times in my reading life I have been so been so touched by a book that when it is over I feel a great loss and literally clasp the book to my chest like a loved-one just departed. Some one once said, after seeing the beauty of Alaska, that he wished he had seen it as an old man, for it's magnificent beauty would surely spoil any scene he would ever see after. That's how I feel about this lovely, beautiful, wonderful book. I am afraid nothing I read will ever make me feel like this. I feel quite touched by it. It's about a small coal-mining village in Wales and the people in it. The focus is on a big wonderful family that loves each other very much though they sure do have their share of trouble. The point of view is that of Huw, beginning when he is just 6 years old and going all the way to his middle age. The prose is, well, poetry. I collected my favorite bits in a list on the bag page but there are too many to fit here. Here's but a few: "Beautiful were the days that are gone, and O, for them to be back. The mountain was green, and proud with a good covering of oak and ash, and washing his feet in a streaming river clear as the eyes of God. The winds came down with the scents of the grass and wild flowers, putting a sweetness to our noses, and taking away so that nobody could tell what beauty had been stolen, only that the winds were old robbers who took something from each grass and flower and gave it back again, and gave a little to each of us, and took it away again." "...a tidy house, but open to the weather, and the winds had choir practice whenever they could on every side of it." "Ceinwen was in my mind, and I kept her there as men keep libraries of rare books, seldom to be touched but happy to know you have got." I wonder if anyone could ever write such a masterpiece again. If I ever thought I could be a writer, I don't now. I suppose I am just a reader, a proper bibliophile. With books like this, it's enough
    • 5/5
      I liked this book very much. Very well written.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely adored this book, and I'm so glad my boyfriend isn't bright enough to keep my birthday presents to himself, which clinched my receiving it.Anyway, I could never really decide while reading this whether it was tragic or comic or dark or light-hearted or serious or ridiculous. This book is everything rolled into one, and a great example of a coming-of-age story done right. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone willing to take on all 500 pages of complicated prose and open to its many themes and "deep" ideas. If you're not up for it, or are looking for something easy on the brain, I wouldn't advise picking this up as it would probably ruin the book for you.
    • 4/5
      Llewellyn gives a striking portrait of a people and culture striving to survive in harsh conditions. The plot revolves around a single family of miners in a Welsh "Valley" typical of the period between World Wars, but is a vehicle for the history of unionization and the desperate need for more humane conditions in the industry, as well as a warning about the ravages of coal-mining on the land. Poignant tales of thwarted romance make up much of the family story. An excellent vignette of an interesting culture. The "Englishing" of the characteristic patterns of the Welsh language contribute to the picture in the beginning, but get cloying by the end.
    • 5/5
      A standard-bearer for all literature to follow. In fact, this book ruined my ability to read banal crap. It set the bar high for all my future reading with its eloquent sentence construction and strong theme continuity. And, can anyone ever forget the book's protagonist shouting out the title of the book after taking a maiden in the meadow for the first time? Ahh, the sweet exuberance.
    • 5/5
      This is a stunningly beautiful book. The prose is amazing - it captures the lilt of the Welsh language, and the Welsh love of poetry and song. The plot is about the unionization of Welsh coal miners and labor conflicts. The story follows the Morgan family, and their role in the conflicts in their valley. But what the book is really about is love between family and friends. Llewellyn portrays many different relationships in painfully real terms - the characters are incredibly vivid, and he finds amazing ways to describe relationships that most people would consider indescribable.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful language, beautiful writing. I only wish Huw's brothers would have been more strongly developed, since they all bled together for me. And then, sometimes it would be revealed that a character had gone away (for example) and I couldn't remember whether this departure had actually been previously addressed. Sometimes important details are thrown into one sentence, and if you blink, you'll miss the connecting plot line. But those are mostly minor details.Ultimately, this would probably have been a five-star book for me if more of the episodes had been related in greater detail. Not necessarily expanded by pages, but just a little bit more to delve deeper into the incidents Llewellyn chooses to relate.
    • 5/5
      Richard Llewellyn has crafted a fine modern day classic with his expansive family saga set in the late 1800s in a South Wales coal mining town. Huw Morgan, now an old man, is ready to leave his home forever as a black slag heap threatens the village. But, before he goes, he looks back on his childhood and young adult life. His memories include work in the coal mines and the formation of unions with their strikes and violence; as well as more tender moments of a boy's first love.Beginning when Huw is only six years old, How Green Was My Valley is lovingly told and builds to its inevitable ending with a grace and simplicity enhanced by Llewellyn's fine voice and lyrical Welsh dialect. The characters that inhabit the novel are tender, humorous, strong and real. One of my favorites is Mr. Gruffydd, the village pastor, who befriends Huw and his family.Llewellyn writes as a musician composes a great symphony - exacting, beautifully wrought, with an ear for poetry and harmony. How Green Was My Valley is a novel about family unity, love, the pain of disappointment and the joy of shared dreams; it is about the strength of neighbors and the beauty of the Welsh countryside. Exquisitely rendered, it is a story the reader immerses herself in and never wants to end.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      A very Welsh story of a mining family a classic of our times i wish more people would read it