author
Richard Hughes
1900–1976
Best known for the haunting novel A High Wind in Jamaica, this British writer built a small but memorable body of work that mixed adventure, psychological insight, and a slightly unsettling view of childhood. He also wrote poetry, short stories, plays, and an ambitious historical fiction sequence.
2 Audiobooks
Gipsy-Night, and Other Poems
by Richard Hughes
A high wind in Jamaica
by Richard Hughes
About the author
Richard Hughes was a British writer born in Weybridge, Surrey, on April 19, 1900, and he died near Harlech, Gwynedd, Wales, on April 28, 1976. Reliable reference sources describe him as a novelist, poet, short-story writer, and playwright, with a reputation that rests especially on the originality and staying power of his fiction.
His most famous book is A High Wind in Jamaica, published in 1929 under the original title The Innocent Voyage. Britannica describes it as a minor classic of 20th-century English literature, and it remains the work most closely associated with his name. Although he did not publish a large number of books, his writing is often noted for its unusual tone and for the way it unsettles easy ideas about innocence, danger, and human behavior.
Later in life, Hughes continued to work across forms and on a larger historical project, The Human Predicament. His career was wide-ranging rather than prolific, which helps explain why readers who discover him often feel they have found someone distinctive and a little outside the usual literary path.