How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, telling the story through narration of the main character, of his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed to have based the book on his own personal experiences but this was proven untrue after his death; Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales though he was of Welsh descent. Llewelyn gathered his facts for the novel from conversations with local mining families in Gilfach Goch.

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."

In the United States, Llewellyn won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1940, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.