Bernard Cronin

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Bernard Cronin
Born Bernard Charles Cronin
18 March 1884(1884-03-18)
Ealing, England
Died 9 June 1968
Camberwell, Victoria, Australia
Pen name Dennis Adair, Hugh Bohun, Tas East, Eric North
Occupation Writer and Journalist


Bernard Cronin (1884-1968), author and journalist was born on the 18th March 1884 in Ealing, second son of Charles Frederick Cronin (1859-1887) and Laura, nee Marshall (1850-1934). His father was advised to go to Australia for the sake of his health where he and his wife went in 1886, leaving Bernard and his brother in the care of their grandmother. In Mitcham, South Australia, Bernard's father succumbed to his illness and died. Laura returned to London and later married Frederick Cecil Browne in 1889, and the two of them returned to Australia in the same year, accompanied by Bernard's brother Laurence Kimberley. Bernard himself followed them to Australia in 1890 in the care of the captain of the Austral.

He emerged from his education in 1901 with a diploma in agriculture from the Agricultural College in Victoria. He joined his brother in a cattle-farming venture in Tasmania which, unfortunately, was not successful. He married a farmer's daughter, Victoria Maud Ferres, on 11th March 1908, and in 1913 he went back to Melbourne, where he worked as a salesman before getting a job as a clerk in the Department of the Navy and began to devote his spare time to writing. He published his first novel The Coastlanders, set in Tasmania, in 1918. He went on to write numerous novels, short stories, poems and a radio play, Stampede (1937) using his own name and a number of pseudonyms, such as Dennis Adair, Hugh Bohun, Tas East and Eric North.

In the 1920's Cronin worked for the Melbourne Herald and in the 1950's he was a contributor to the Melbourne Sun. During World War II he worked as a publicity censor in Victoria and Western Australia.

In 1920 Cronin was one of the co-founders of the Old Derelicts' Club for struggling authors and writers. This in turn became the Society of Australian Authors in 1927, of which Cronin was its first president. This society was wound up in 1936 because, in Cronin's words, it was becoming 'infiltrated by politics'. In 1933 he founded the Quill Club, and was a long term member of the International PEN Club (Melbourne) and was granted life membership in 1961.

He was a keen student of The Bible and supporter of the British-Israelist movement.

In his later life he took up woodcarving and painting. He died at his home in East Camberwell, Victoria on 9th June 1968 and was buried in Springvale Cemetery.

[edit] Partial Bibliography

  • The Coastlanders (1918)
  • Timber Wolves (1920)
  • Bluff Stakes (1922)
  • Salvage (1923)
  • Toad (1924, serially in the Melbourne Herald) (Also published, with some changes, as The Green Flame (as Eric North) in A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine: Volume 1, Number 4 July 1950)
  • Red Dawson (1927)
  • White Gold (1927)
  • Dragonfly (1928)
  • The Treasure of the Tropics (1928)
  • Bracken (1929)
  • Romance of the Licensing Court (1930)
  • Bushranging Silhouettes. Tales (1932) (with Arthur Russell Goode)
  • The Sow's Ear (1933)
  • Black Tragedy (as Hugh Bohun) (c. 1933)
  • The Valley of Stars (1934)
  • Stampede (1937) (A radio play)
  • Story Writing (1937)
  • Who Killed Marie Westhoven? (as Eric North) (bet. 1921 & 1940)
  • Death Rides the Desert. A Novel (1940) (as Dennis Adair)
  • The Shadows Mystery (1944)
  • How Runs the Road (1948)
  • Three Against The Stars (as Eric North in Fantastic Novels Magazine: Vol. 4, No 1) (May 1950)
  • National Theatre Arts Festival: ballet, opera, drama (1951) (editor)
  • The Ant Men (as Eric North) (1953)
  • A Chip On My Shoulder (as Eric North) (1955)
  • The Name is Smith (as Eric North) (1957 (US))
  • Nobody Stops Me (as Eric North) (1960)
  • The North Wind (song - words by Bernard Cronin, music by Mabel Down
  • Papers (1890-1969)

[edit] References

(1) Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition - Author Sally O'Neill
(2) Family Records
(3) British Library Integrated Catalogue
(4) Science Fiction - The Early Years by Everett F. Bleiler & Richard Bleiler, Kent State University Press, 1990.
(5) WorldCat - Bernard Cronin