Llewellyn, Richard

Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd was born in 1906 in Hendon, London. He entered the workforce at sixteen, washing dishes at the Claridges Hotel in London, but soon progressed to more responsible positions in Italian hotels. In 1924, he joined the British army, serving for six years in India and Hong Kong. After leaving the service, he returned to England where he held a series of odd jobs, including a stint as a miner in South Wales and as a playwright. By 1938, he was working for Twentieth Century-Fox, a position that he left to complete his first novel, How Green Was My Valley, which was published in 1939.

Written over a period of twelve years, How Green Was My Valley, the story of a Welsh mining family, was a critical and commercial success, and later was made into an Oscar-winning film. The success of the novel made Llewellyn an instant celebrity, and gave him the opportunity to travel widely and lecture in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

A second novel, None But the Lonely Heart, was published mistakenly when Llewellyn joined the Welsh Guard at the beginning of World War II and left the unfinished manuscript with his publisher. This book, based on the London underworld, also had a strong following, and was also made into a movie. Almost thirty years later, when the novel was republished, Llewellyn added over one hundred pages to its conclusion.

Llewellyn attained the rank of captain as a Welsh Guard in World War II, but returned to writing after the Allied victory. He served as a reporter at the Nuremberg trials, and also turned his hand to screenwriting. Llewellyn traveled to the U.S. in 1946, where he was employed as a screenwriter for MGM. Although he wrote a number of screenplays and screen treatments over the next six years, none appear to have been produced. During that time, a third novel, A Few Flowers for Shiner (1950), drew on his knowledge of Italy, and described the war-torn country through the eyes of British soldiers.

Llewellyn's sojourn in the United States, where he married for the first time, inspired his fourth novel, A Flame for Doubting Thomas (1953), which again described a lower-class subculture; this time, he focused his attention on carnival life on a California pier. A first draft of the novel was completely rewritten, and it went through many changes before it was published to luke-warm reviews.

For the next thirty years, Llewellyn published novels on almost an annual or biannual basis. He returned to the Morgan family so beloved in How Green Was My Valley, and wrote a number of sequels following the life of its protagonist, Huw Morgan. He wrote a series of spy novels, as well as juvenile historical works. His novels remained popular throughout his life, although none reached the level of critical and commercial success of his first.

Llewellyn led a peripatetic existence, living in the U.S., Israel, Latin America, Africa, Italy, France, Switzerland; he often drew from his experiences in these countries when he wrote. Llewellyn married twice: his first wife was Nona Sonstenby, whom he married in 1952 and divorced in 1968, and his second wife was Susan Heimann, whom he married in 1974. He died November 30, 1983.

From the guide to the Richard Llewellyn Papers TXRC97-A2., 1939-1952, (bulk 1949-1952), (Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin)