A. J. Cronin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Enlarge

Archibald Joseph Cronin (July 19, 1896–January 9, 1981) was a Scottish novelist who is remembered chiefly as the author of The Citadel and The Keys of the Kingdom, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films. The Dr. Finlay character originated in Cronin's 1935 short story, "Country Doctor," which led to further stories that were collected in The Adventures of a Black Bag. These provided the basis for the long-running BBC television and radio series entitled Dr. Finlay's Casebook.

Born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire (now in Argyll and Bute), Scotland, Cronin was the only child of a Protestant mother, Jessie Montgomerie Cronin, and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin, and would later write of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. He was a precocious student at Dumbarton Academy and won many writing competitions. Due to his exceptional abilities, he was awarded a scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow. It was there that he met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson, who was also a medical student. He graduated with honours from medical school in 1919 and went on to earn additional degrees, including his MRCP.

Cronin trained as a doctor in various hospitals before serving as a Royal Navy surgeon during World War I, like the medical hero of his novel Shannon's Way. After the war he set up a practice in a mining area of South Wales, and in 1924, he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines. He drew on his experiences researching the deleterious effects of the mining industry on the workers' health for his later novels The Citadel, set in Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in northeastern England. He subsequently moved to London and had a thriving practice on Harley Street. While on holiday in the Scottish Highlands, Cronin wrote his first novel, Hatter's Castle, which was a great success. It tells the story of a family brought to ruin by the megalomania and ruthlessness of its patriarch.

Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers that were translated into numerous languages. His strengths included his narrative skill and his powers of acute observation and graphic description. Some of his novels and stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing realism, romance, and social criticism. The Citadel is said to have contributed to the establishment of the National Health Service in Great Britain by exposing the injustice and incompetence of medical practice at the time.

In the late 1930s Cronin moved to the United States with his wife and three sons, eventually settling in New Canaan, Connecticut. Ultimately, he returned to Europe, residing in Lucerne and Montreux, Switzerland for the last twenty-five years of his life and continuing to write into his eighties. He died on January 9, 1981, in Montreux.

[edit] Bibliography

Many of the following works were made into films or televised series:

[edit] External link

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../a/2E/_/A._J._Cronin_820f.html"