Caradog Prichard was born in 1904, the youngest son of a slate quarryman in Bethesda, North Wales, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. His father died in a quarry accident when he was five months old. He left school at seventeen to become a journalist on a local Welsh newspaper, and five years later moved south to Cardiff, then still an unofficial capital city, to work for a daily paper with wide circulation in Wales. From that point on he earned his living mostly in English, while his literary language remained Welsh, and while working nights he gained a Cardiff University degree in both languages. In 1934 he left Wales to work for national newspapers in London, and he died there in 1980. He was at first known in Wales only as a poet and journalist. He won the main National Eisteddfod prizes for Welsh poetry - three Crowns for free verse in 1927, 28 and 29, and in 1962 the Chair, for work in strict traditional forms. One Moonlit Night, his only novel, was first published in 1961 in Welsh, as Un Nos Ola Leuad.

It has since inspired stage, film and radio adaptations, music and visual art, and been translated into eleven other languages. In 2014 readers of the Wales Arts Review voted it the greatest Welsh novel, and in 2022 it was chosen by BBC Arts and the national Reading Agency charity for their Jubilee list of outstanding books by British Commonwealth authors in the seventy years of the Queen's reign.