Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard

T J Llewelyn Prichard is best known as the author of Twm Sion Catti - claimed to be the first Welsh novel in English and popular enough to be pirated in the mid 19th Century. Dozens of versions of the story have been published since. If only for this reason, Prichard ranks as an important Welsh antecedent. Much of the story of his life must be conjectural. He left few clues in his own writings. It is certain he was born in Builth, fairly certain that he spent part of his childhood in the parish of Trallang. He was an actor in London, possibly under the stage name of Mr Jefferies, before he returned to writing. He came back to Wales to sell his first substantial book of poems Welsh Minstrely? And thereafter lived a largely hand to mouth existence writing and selling his books by subscription or door to door, acting and for a while cataloguing the library of Lady Llanover. Sometime circa 1840 he lost his nose, allegedly in a fencing match. Twm Sion Catti (1824) briefly brought him a measure of fame and a little money but his last literary venture Heroines of Welsh History (1854) was a commercial failure and he became a lonely derelict in Swansea where he died as a result of burns in his own fire.