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Philip Mitchell is an English author, playwright, poet and translator. Born in Manchester, England he is best known for his acclaimed translation of Caradog Prichard's Welsh language novel Un Nos Ola Leuad, as One Moonlit Night. (ISBN 0-8112-1342-0)

Mitchell discovered Prichard's novel when studying Welsh A-level (for which it was a set text) and was surprised to find that it had never been translated fully into English. Indeed, there were those who claimed the novel could not be translated into English as it is written entirely in a dialect common in the Bethesda district of North Wales (where Prichard was born) but little-known outside that area.

Canongate Press in Edinburgh first accepted the translation for publication but the rights to publish Mitchell's translation were later acquired by publishers Penguin Books in London and New Directions in New York.

Canongate republished the novel in January 2009 with a foreword by Jan Morris and an 'afterword' by Niall Griffiths. (ISBN 1847671071, ISBN 978-1847671073)

" . . . translated by Philip Mitchell in prose which miraculously conveys the incantatory biblical and Celtic cadences of the original." [The Guardian, 10/01/09]

"The translation by Philip Mitchell - the first complete one in English - is lovely." [The Observer, 11/01/09]

"Philip Mitchell's brilliant translation will help ensure that One Moonlit Night becomes a classic in the English-speaking world." [Washington Post]

Foreign language translations of Mitchell's English translation have made the book available to readers in several European countries.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Philip Mitchell", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0