Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard

(Writers of Wales series)

Sam Adams

‘ . . . Sam Adams' account of the life and works of this Welsh writer makes for entertaining and fascinating reading . . . Here is a writer that no serious scholar of the history of Welsh writing in English can afford to overlook.’ (Planet)

T. J. Llewelyn Prichard should be regarded as more than just a curiosity in the history of literature in Wales. He was one of the first to consider himself an Anglo-Welsh writer, and was the first Welsh writer to pen a novel – the much pirated and retold The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shôn Catti (1828).

Much of the story of his life must be conjectural. It is certain that he was born in Builth Wells, fairly certain that he spent part of his childhood in Breconshire. He was an actor in London, probably under the stage name of Mr Jefferies, before he turned to writing. After returning to Wales to sell his first substantial book of poems, Welsh Minstrelsy, he lived a largely hand-to-mouth existence, writing and mostly selling his books by subscription or from door to door. Twm Shôn Catti briefly brought him a measure of fame and a little money, but commercial failure followed, and he became a lonely derelict living in Swansea, where he died as a result of burns from his own fire.

This first book-length study of Prichard is based on original research and sheds new light on his mysterious life and varied literary output.

‘Dyma’r bywgraffiad cyntaf o sylwedd am Thomas Prichard ac felly mae’n gyfraniad pwysig i’r broses o ddeall Prichard a’i waith.’ (Taliesin)

The cover illustration is reproduced courtesy of the Curator, Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library, Harvard University. It shows ‘Mr Jefferies’ in the role of Padmanaba, ‘a renowned astrologer’ in a comic pantomime Harlequin and Padmanaba performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, at some time after 1812. There is evidence to suggest that ‘Mr Jefferies’ was the stage name of T. J. Llewelyn Prichard. If this is the case, it is probably the only portrait of Prichard to have survived.