How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, narrated by Huw Morgan, the main character, about his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live.

The author had claimed that he based the book on his own experiences, but this was found after his death to be untrue; Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales, though he was of Welsh descent.

[1] Llewellyn gathered material for the novel from conversations with local mining families in the village of Gilfach Goch, in southeast Wales.

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

[3] One of Huw's three sisters, Angharad, marries Iestyn Evans, the wealthy mine owner's son – whom she does not love – and the marriage is an unhappy one.

After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, and the village is reduced to a contaminated shell, and the house is being destroyed by a slag heap, he too decides to leave, and tells the story of his life just before going away.