Editing Richard Hughes (British writer)

{{Short description|British writer (1900–1976)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2015}}
[[File:NLW Image Richard Hughes.png|thumb|Richard Hughes in 1971]]
'''Richard Arthur Warren Hughes''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE}} (19 April 1900 – 28 April 1976) was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.<ref>[[Richard Perceval Graves]]: ''Richard Hughes. A biography.'' London: A. Deutsch, 1994.
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==Biography==
He was born in [[Weybridge]], Surrey. His father was Arthur Hughes, a civil servant, and his mother, Louisa Grace Warren, had been brought up in the West Indies in Jamaica. He was educated first at [[Charterhouse School]] and graduated from [[Oriel College, Oxford|Oriel College]], Oxford in 1922.

A Charterhouse schoolmaster had sent Hughes's first published work to the magazine ''[[The Spectator (1828)|The Spectator]]'' in 1917. The article, written as a school essay, was an unfavourable criticism of ''[[The Loom of Youth]]'', by [[Alec Waugh]], a recently published novel which caused a furore for its account of homosexual passions between British schoolboys in a [[Public School (UK)|public school]]. At Oxford, he met [[Robert Graves]], also an [[List of Old Carthusians|Old Carthusian]], and they co-edited a poetry publication, ''[[Oxford Poetry]]'', in 1921. Hughes's short play ''[[The Sisters' Tragedy]]'' was being staged in the [[West End of London]] at the [[Royal Court Theatre]] by 1922.<ref>[http://www.enotes.com/richard-hughes-salem/richard-hughes E-Notes: Richard Hughes Biography]. Retrieved 25 March 2013</ref> He was the author of the world's first radio play, ''A Comedy Of Danger'',<ref>[https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/484dae1930e943e1b146ad4f465c9145 BBC Genome listing for ''An Evening of Plays'', 15 January 1924]</ref> commissioned from him for the [[BBC]] by [[Nigel Playfair]] and broadcast on 15 January 1924.

Hughes was employed as a journalist and travelled widely before he married the painter [[Frances Bazley]] (1905–1985) in 1932. They settled for a period in [[Norfolk]] and then in 1934 at [[Castle House, Laugharne]] in South Wales. [[Dylan Thomas]] stayed with Hughes and wrote his book ''[[Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog]]'' whilst living at Castle House. Hughes was instrumental in Thomas relocating permanently to the area.<ref>{{cite web |title=Dylan Thomas' Laugharne |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/dylan-thomas/pages/laugharne.shtml |website=Wales Arts |publisher=BBC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131213232238/http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/dylan-thomas/pages/laugharne.shtml |archive-date=13 December 2013 |date=6 November 2008}}</ref>

He wrote only four novels, the most famous of which is ''The Innocent Voyage'' (1929), or ''[[A High Wind in Jamaica (novel)|A High Wind in Jamaica]]'', as Hughes renamed it soon after its initial publication.<ref>Frank Swinnerton: "Books: Novel Changes Its Name for British Readers; 'Innocent Voyage' Soon to Be Reprinted," ''The Chicago Tribune'' (10 August 1929), p. 6.  "The novel by Richard Hughes, published with so much and such welcome success in the United States under the title of "The Innocent Voyage," is to be issued in England in the autumn. Its title will be 'High Wind in Jamaica.'"</ref> Set in the 19th century, it explores the events which follow the accidental capture of a group of English children by pirates: the children are revealed as considerably more amoral than the pirates (it was in this novel that Hughes first described the cocktail [[Hangman's Blood]]). In 1938, he wrote an allegorical novel, ''In Hazard'', based on the true story of the ''S.S. Phemius'' who was caught in the [[1932 Cuba hurricane]] for four days during its maximum intensity. He wrote volumes of children's stories, including ''The Spider's Palace''.

During the war, Hughes had a desk job in the [[British Admiralty|Admiralty]]. He met the architects [[Jane Drew]] and [[Maxwell Fry]], whose children stayed with the Hughes family for much of that time. After the end of the war, he spent ten years writing scripts for [[Ealing Studios]], and published no more novels until 1961. Of the trilogy ''[[The Human Predicament (Richard Hughes)|The Human Predicament]]'', only the first two volumes, ''[[The Fox in the Attic]]'' (1961) and ''The Wooden Shepherdess'' (1973), were complete when he died; twelve chapters, less than 50 pages, of the final volume are now published. In these, he describes the course of [[European history]] from the 1920s through World War II, including real characters and events—such as [[Hitler]]'s escape after the abortive [[Beer Hall Putsch|Munich putsch]]—as well as fictional.

Later in life, Hughes relocated to [[Ynys, Gwynedd|Ynys]] in [[Gwynedd]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://stainedglass.llgc.org.uk/object/3757|title=The Arrival of St Tecwyn - work from Stained Glass in Wales|website=stainedglass.llgc.org.uk|access-date=19 August 2020}}</ref> He was churchwarden of [[Llanfihangel-y-traethau]], the village church, where he was buried when he died at home in 1976.<ref>{{citation |last=Pearson|first=Lynn F.|title=Discovering Famous Graves |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9IaHTin6y2wC&pg=PA134|access-date=25 March 2016 |year=2004|publisher=Osprey Publishing|isbn=978-0-7478-0619-6}}</ref>

Hughes was a Fellow of the [[Royal Society of Literature]] and, in the United States, an honorary member of both the [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]] and the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]]. He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the [[Order of the British Empire]]) in 1946.

==Family==

Richard and Frances Hughes had five children.<ref name="Poole">{{cite book|title=Richard Hughes, Novelist |last=Poole |first=Richard|year=1987 | publisher=Poetry Wales Press |isbn=0-907476-52-X}}</ref> Their second child, Penelope Hughes, published a memoir, ''Richard Hughes: Author, Father'', in 1984.<ref name="Penelope Hughes">{{cite book|title=Richard Hughes: Author, Father |last=Hughes |first=Penelope|year=1984 | publisher=Alan Sutton, Gloucester |isbn=0862990815}}</ref>

==Works==
{{Col-begin}}
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===Novels===
* ''[[A High Wind in Jamaica (novel)|A High Wind in Jamaica]]'' (1929)
* ''In Hazard'' (1938)
* ''The Human Predicament:''
** ''[[The Fox in the Attic|Volume 1: The Fox in the Attic]]'' (1962) 
** ''Volume 2: The Wooden Shepherdess'' (1973)

===Poetry===
* ''Gypsy-Night and other poems'' (1922)
* ''Confessio Juvenis: Collected Poems'' (1926)

===Plays===
* ''The Sisters' Tragedy'' (1922)
* ''Danger: a Play'' (1924)
* ''A Comedy of Good and Evil'' (1924)
* ''The Man Born to be Hanged'' (1924)
* ''The Sisters' Tragedy, and Three Other Plays'' (1924)

{{Col-2}}

===Short story collections===
* ''A Moment of Time'' (1926)
* ''In the Lap of Atlas: Stories of Morocco'' (1979)

===Stories for children===
* ''The Spider’s Palace and Other Stories'' (1931)
* ''Don’t Blame Me! and Other Stories'' (1940)
* ''Gertrude’s Child'' (1966)
* ''The Wonder Dog: Collected Children’s Stories'' (1977)

===Criticism===
* ''[[John Skelton (poet)|John Skelton]]: Poems'' (1924, editor)
* ''Fiction as Truth: Selected Literary Writings of Richard Hughes'' (1983)

===Screenplays===
* ''[[A Run for Your Money]]'' (1949) (with [[Clifford Evans (actor)|Clifford Evans]], [[Leslie Norman (director)|Leslie Norman]], [[Diana Morgan (screenwriter)|Diana Morgan]] and [[Charles Frend]])
* ''[[The Divided Heart]]'' (1954) (with [[Jack Whittingham]]){{Col-end}}
Hughes also ghost-wrote ''The Story of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith''  (1925) for [[Nigel Playfair]],<ref>Graves: ''Richard Hughes. A biography'', p. 111.</ref> and collaborated with J. D. Scott on an official government publication, ''The Administration of War Production'' (1955).

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/hughesr.html Hughes manuscripts collected at Indiana University]
* {{Gutenberg author | id=35251}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Richard Arthur Warren Hughes |birth=1900 |death=1976}}
* {{Librivox author |id=17736}}
* {{LCAuth|n50034197|Richard Hughes|53|ue}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Richard}}
[[Category:1900 births]]
[[Category:1976 deaths]]
[[Category:English short story writers]]
[[Category:Welsh poets]]
[[Category:Welsh novelists]]
[[Category:Welsh short story writers]]
[[Category:Welsh dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature]]
[[Category:People educated at Charterhouse School]]
[[Category:People from Weybridge]]
[[Category:British radio writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century English poets]]
[[Category:20th-century English dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:British male poets]]
[[Category:British male dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:English male short story writers]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century British short story writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]