John Cledwyn Hughes (1920âÂÂ1978), who wrote under the name Cledwyn Hughes, was an Anglo-Welsh writer of novels, children's books, and literary-topographical books about Wales. He was also a prolific short-story writer who was published in a wide range of popular and literary magazines including The New Yorker, Argosy and Woman and Home.
The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales cites The Civil Strangers (Phoenix House, 1950) as his most distinguished work and notes the fineness of his topographical writing, and of his writing for children.
Hughes was born at Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain in Montgomeryshire, and died at Arthog, Merionethshire, where he and his wife Alyna lived from 1947. An archive of his papers is held at the National Library of Wales.
Over 250 short stories are known to have been published by Cledwyn Hughes. The first recorded published story being in 1943 ('Their Secret Sorrows' in the Weekly Telegraph). The manuscripts of the majority of stories are available to researchers in the National Library of Wales archives.
Hughes's writing had an international reach and received attention in a wide range of literary and popular publications. His writing is described in contemporary reviews as poetic, showing whimsy and melancholia, or at times a darker sentiment. The Spectator (7 February 1947) welcomed the first longer works by Hughes (The Inn Closes for Christmas and The Different Drummer) describing them as 'Two vivid short novels by a brilliant young Welshman whose short stories have already established his reputation'.