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A. J. Cronin

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A. J. Cronin
Cronin in 1939
Cronin in 1939
BornArchibald Joseph Cronin
(1896-07-19)19 July 1896
Cardross,Dunbartonshire,[1]Scotland
Died6 January 1981(1981-01-06)(aged 84)
Montreux,Switzerland
Resting placeCimetière de La Tour-de-Peilz,La Tour-de-Peilz,Vaud,Switzerland
Occupation
Spouse
Agnes Gibson
​
(m.1921)​
Children3, includingVincentandPatrick

Archibald Joseph Cronin(19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known asA. J. Cronin,was a Scottishphysicianandnovelist.[2]His best-known novel isThe Citadel(1937), about a Scottish physician who serves in a Welshminingvillage before achieving success in London, where he becomes disillusioned about the venality and incompetence of some doctors. Cronin knew both areas, as a medical inspector of mines and as a physician inHarley Street.The book exposed unfairness and malpractice in British medicine and helped to inspire theNational Health Service.[3]

The Stars Look Down,set in theNorth East of England,is another of his best-selling novels inspired by his work among miners. Both novels have been filmed, as haveHatter's Castle,The Keys of the KingdomandThe Green Years.His 1935 novellaCountry Doctorinspired a long-runningBBCradio and TV series,Dr. Finlay's Casebook(1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996.[4]

Early life[edit]

Rosebank Cottage, Cronin's birthplace

Cronin was born inCardross,Dunbartonshire,[1]Scotland,the only child of aPresbyterianmother, Jessie Cronin (née Montgomerie), and aCatholicfather, Patrick Cronin. Cronin often wrote of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. His paternal grandparents had emigrated fromCounty Armagh,Ireland, and become glass and china merchants inAlexandria.Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870. His maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was ahatterwho owned a shop inDumbarton.After their marriage Cronin's parents moved toHelensburgh,where he attended Grant Street School. When he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent and commercial traveller, died oftuberculosis.He and his mother moved to her parents' home in Dumbarton, and she soon became a public health inspector inGlasgow.

Cronin was not only a precocious student atDumbarton Academy,[5]who won prizes in writing competitions, but an excellent athlete andassociation footballer.From an early age he was an avid golfer, and he enjoyed the sport throughout his life.[6]He also loved salmon fishing.

The family later moved toYorkhill,Glasgow,where Cronin attendedSt Aloysius' College[5]in theGarnethillarea of the city. He played football for the First XI there, an experience he included in one of his last novels,The Minstrel Boy.A family decision that he should study either to join the church or to practise medicine was settled by Cronin himself when he chose "the lesser of two evils".[7]He won aCarnegiescholarship to study medicine at theUniversity of Glasgowin 1914. Having been absent in 1916–1917 for naval service, he graduated in 1919 with highest honours in the degree of MBChB. Later that year he visited India as ship's surgeon on a liner. Cronin went on to earn additional qualifications, including a Diploma in Public Health (1923) andMembership of the Royal College of Physicians(1924). In 1925 he gained anMDat the University of Glasgow with adissertationentitled "The History ofAneurysm".

Medical career[edit]

During theFirst World War,Cronin served as asurgeonsub-lieutenantin theRoyal Navy Volunteer Reservebefore graduating from medical school. After the war he trained at hospitals that included Bellahouston Hospital andLightburn Hospitalin Glasgow and theRotunda HospitalinDublin.He undertook general practice atGarelochhead,a village on theRiver Clyde,and inTredegar,aminingtown inSouth Wales.In 1924 he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. His survey of medical regulations incollieriesand his reports onthe correlationbetween coal-dust inhalation andpulmonary diseasewere published over the next few years.[8]Cronin drew on his medical experience and research into the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels –The Citadel,set in Wales, andThe Stars Look Down,set inNorthumberland.He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening a busy medical practice of his own inNotting Hill.Cronin was also the medical officer for theWhiteleysdepartment store at the time and had an increasing interest inophthalmology.

Writing career[edit]

A. J. Cronin in 1931

In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed with a chronicduodenalulcerand told to take six months' complete rest in the country on a milk diet. At Dalchenna Farm byLoch Fynehe was finally able to indulge a lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously "written nothing but prescriptions and scientific papers."[9]From Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton to research the background of his first novel, using files from Dumbarton Library, which still has a letter from him requesting advice. He composedHatter's Castlein the span of three months and quickly had it accepted byGollancz,the only publisher to which he submitted it, apparently after his wife had randomly stuck a pin in a list of publishers.[7]It was an immediate success and launched Cronin's career as a prolific author. He never returned to medicine.

Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers in their day and translated into many languages. Some of his stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mi xing realism, romance and social criticism. Cronin's works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society, as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man. One of his early novels,The Stars Look Down(1935), chronicles transgressions in a mining community in north-east England and an ambitious miner's rise to be aMember of Parliament(MP).

A prodigiously fast writer, Cronin liked to average 5,000 words a day, meticulously planning the details of his plots in advance.[7]He was known to be tough in business dealings, although in private life he was a person whose "pawky humour... peppered his conversations," according to one of his editors,Peter Haining.[7]

Cronin also contributed stories and essays to various international publications. During theSecond World Warhe worked for the BritishMinistry of Information,writing articles as well as participating in radio broadcasts to foreign countries.

Influence ofThe Citadel[edit]

The Citadel(1937), a tale of a doctor's struggle to balance scientific integrity with social obligations, helped to promote the establishment of theNational Health Service(NHS) in the United Kingdom by exposing the inequity and incompetence of medical practice at the time. In the novel, Cronin advocated a free public health service to defeat the wiles of doctors who "raisedguinea-snatching and the bamboozling of patients to an art form. "[7]Cronin andAneurin Bevanhad both worked at theTredegar Cottage Hospitalin Wales, which served as one of the bases for the NHS. The author quickly made enemies in the medical profession, and there was a concerted effort by one group of specialists to getThe Citadelbanned. Cronin's novel, which became the highest-selling book ever published by Gollancz, informed the public about corruption in the medical system, which eventually led to reform. Not only were the author's pioneering ideas instrumental in creating the NHS, but according to the historianRaphael Samuel,the popularity of Cronin's novels played a major role in theLabour Party's landslide victory in 1945.[10]

By contrast, one of Cronin's biographers, Alan Davies, called the book's reception mixed. A few of the more vociferous medical practitioners of the day took exception to one of its many messages: that a few well-heeled doctors in fashionable practices were unethically extracting large amounts of money from their equally well-off patients. Some pointed to a lack of balance between criticism and praise for hard-working doctors. The majority accepted it for what it was, a topical novel. The press tried to incite passions within the profession in an attempt to sell copy, whileVictor Gollanczfollowed suit in an attempt to promote the book – both overlooking that it was a work of fiction, not a scientific piece of research, and not autobiographical.

In the United StatesThe Citadelwon theNational Book Award,Favorite Fiction of 1937, voted by members of theAmerican Booksellers Association.[11]According to aGalluppoll taken in 1939,The Citadelwas voted the most interesting book readers had ever read.[12]

Religion[edit]

Some of Cronin's novels also deal with religion, which he had grown away from during his medical training and career, but with which he became reacquainted in the 1930s. At medical school, as he recounts in his autobiography, he had become an agnostic: "When I thought of God it was with a superior smile, indicative of biological scorn for such an outworn myth." During his practice in Wales, however, the deep religious faith of the people he worked among made him start to wonder whether "the compass of existence held more than my text-books had revealed, more than I had ever dreamed of. In short I lost my superiority, and this, though I was not then aware of it, is the first step towards finding God."

Cronin also came to feel, "If we consider the physicaluniverse... we cannot escape the notion of a primary Creator.... Acceptevolutionwith itsfossilsand elementaryspecies,itsscientificdoctrineofnaturalcauses. And still you are confronted with the same mystery, primary and profound.Ex nihilo nihil,as the Latin tag of our schooldays has it: nothing can come of nothing. "This was brought home to him in London, where in his spare time he had organised a working boys' club. One day he invited a distinguishedzoologistto deliver a lecture to the members. The speaker, adopting "a frankly atheistic approach", described the sequence of events leading to the emergence, "though he did not say how," of thefirst primitive life-formfrom lifelessmatter.When he concluded, there was polite applause. Then, "a mild and very average youngster rose nervously to his feet," and with a slight stammer asked how there came to be anything in the first place. The naïve question took everyone by surprise. The lecturer "looked annoyed, hesitated, slowly turned red. Then, before he could answer, the whole club burst into a howl of laughter. The elaborate structure of logic offered by the test-tube realist had been crumpled by one word of challenge from a simple-minded boy."[13]

Family[edit]

Cronin with family in 1938

It was at university that Cronin met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson (May, 1898–1981), who was also a medical student.[14]She was the daughter of Robert Gibson, amasterbaker,and AgnesThomsonGibson (néeGilchrist) ofHamilton,Lanarkshire. The couple married on 31 August 1921. As a physician, Mary worked with her husband briefly in thedispensarywhile he was employed by theTredegar Medical Aid Society.She also assisted him with his practice in London. When he became an author, she wouldproofreadhismanuscripts.Their first son,Vincent,was born in Tredegar in 1924. Their second,Patrick,was born inLondonin 1926, and Andrew, their youngest, in London in 1937.

With his stories being adapted forHollywoodfilms, Cronin and his family moved to the United States in 1939, living inBel Air,California,Nantucket,Massachusetts,Greenwich,Connecticut, andBlue Hill,Maine.[15]In 1945, the Cronins sailed back to England aboard theRMSQueen Mary,staying briefly inHoveand then inRaheny,Ireland, before returning to the US the following year. They took up residence at theCarlyle HotelinNew York Cityand then inDeerfield,Massachusetts, before settling inNew Canaan,Connecticut, in 1947. Cronin also travelled frequently to summer homes inBermudaandCap-d'Ail,France.

Later years[edit]

Ultimately Cronin returned to Europe, to reside inLucerneandMontreux,Switzerland, for the last 25 years of his life. He continued to write into his eighties. He included among his friendsLaurence Olivier,Charlie ChaplinandAudrey Hepburn,to whose first son he was agodfather.Richard E. Berlinwas the godfather of his son Andrew.

Although the latter part of his life was spent entirely abroad, Cronin retained great affection for the district of his childhood, writing in 1972 to a local teacher: "Although I have travelled the world over I must say in all sincerity that my heart belongs to Dumbarton.... In my study there is a beautiful 17th-century coloured print of theRock.... I even follow with great fervour the fortunes of theDumbarton football team."[16]Further evidence of Cronin's lifelong support of Dumbarton F.C. comes from a framed typewritten letter hanging in the foyer of the club's stadium. The letter, written in 1972 and addressed to the club's then secretary, congratulates the team on its return to the top division after a gap of 50 years. He recalls his childhood support for it, and on occasion being "lifted over" the turnstiles (a common practice in times past so that children did not have to pay).[17]

Cronin died on 6 January 1981 in Montreux and is interred atLa Tour-de-Peilz.[18]Many of Cronin's writings, including published and unpublished literary manuscripts, drafts, letters, school exercise books and essays,laboratorybooks and his M.D. thesis, are held at theNational Library of Scotlandand at theHarry Ransom Centerat theUniversity of Texas.

Cronin's widow Agnes died five months later on 10 June 1981, and after cremation, her ashes were buried next to him.

Honours[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Cronin blue plaque

Selected periodical publications[edit]

  • "Lily of the Valley,"Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan,(February 1936),ISBN978-1543220940
  • "The Citadel..."The Australian Women's Weekly,(9 October 1937) Vol.5 # 18, begin serialization.[20]
  • "Mascot for Uncle,"Good Housekeeping,(February 1938),ISBN978-1530135349
  • "The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met: The Doctor of Lennox,"Reader's Digest,35 (September 1939): 26–30.
  • "The Portrait,"Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan,(December 1940),ISBN978-1543220940
  • "Turning Point of My Career,"Reader's Digest,38 (May 1941): 53–57.
  • "Diogenes in Maine,"Reader's Digest,39 (August 1941): 11–13.
  • "Reward of Mercy,"Reader's Digest,39 (September 1941): 25–37.
  • "How I Came to Write a Novel of a Priest,"Life,11 (20 October 1941): 64–66.
  • "Drama in Everyday Life,"Reader's Digest,42 (March 1943): 83–86.
  • "Candles in Vienna,"Reader's Digest,48 (June 1946): 1–3.
  • "Star of Hope Still Rises,"Reader's Digest,53 (December 1948): 1–3.
  • "Johnny Brown Stays Here,"Reader's Digest,54 (January 1949): 9–12.
  • Two Gentlemen of Verona, "Reader's Digest,54 (February 1949): 1–5.
  • "Greater Gift,"Reader's Digest,54 (March 1949): 88–91.
  • "The One Chance,"Redbook,(March 1949),ISBN978-1543220940
  • "An Irish Rose,"Reader's Digest,56 (January 1950): 21–24.
  • "Monsieur le Maire,"Reader's Digest,58 (January 1951): 52–56.
  • "Best Investment I Ever Made,"Reader's Digest,58 (March 1951): 25–28.
  • "Quo Vadis?",Reader's Digest,59 (December 1951): 41–44.
  • "Tombstone for Nora Malone,"Reader's Digest,60 (January 1952): 99–101.
  • "When You Dread Failure,"Reader's Digest,60 (February 1952): 21–24.
  • "What I Learned at La Grande Chartreuse,"Reader's Digest,62 (February 1953): 73–77.[21]
  • "Grace of Gratitude,"Reader's Digest,62 (March 1953): 67–70.
  • "Thousand and One Lives,"Reader's Digest,64 (January 1954): 8–11.
  • "How to Stop Worrying,"Reader's Digest,64 (May 1954): 47–50.
  • "Don't Be Sorry for Yourself!,"Reader's Digest,66 (February 1955): 97–100.
  • "Unless You Deny Yourself,"Reader's Digest,68 (January 1956): 54–56.
  • "Resurrection of Joao Jacinto,"Reader's Digest,89 (November 1966): 153–157.[22]

Film adaptations[edit]

Selected television credits[edit]

Selected radio credits[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^abBefore 16 May 1975 Cardross was in Dunbartonshire
  2. ^"AJ Cronin".University of Glasgow.Retrieved15 January2023.
  3. ^"A.J. Cronin: Biography on Undiscovered Scotland".undiscoveredscotland.co.uk.Retrieved13 August2023.
  4. ^"All about the doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland".The National.3 January 2021.Retrieved13 August2023.
  5. ^abLiukkonen, Petri."A. J. Cronin".Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi).Finland:KuusankoskiPublic Library. Archived fromthe originalon 25 April 2011.
  6. ^MacPherson, Hamish (3 January 2021)."AJ Cronin: The doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland".The National.Glasgow.Retrieved15 January2023.
  7. ^abcdePeter Haining (1994)On Call with Doctor Finlay.London: Boxtree Limited.ISBN1852834714
  8. ^For example,Cronin, A.J. (1926)."Dust inhalation by hematite miners".Journal of Industrial Hygiene.8:291-295.
  9. ^A. J. Cronin,Adventures in Two Worlds.Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1952, pp. 261–262.
  10. ^Samuel, R. (22 June 1995)."North and South: A Year in a Mining Village".London Review of Books.17(12): 3–6.
  11. ^ab"Booksellers Give Prize to 'Citadel': Cronin's Work About Doctors Their Favorite–'Mme. Curie' Gets Non-Fiction Award TWO OTHERS WIN HONORS Fadiman Is 'Not Interested' in What Pulitzer Committee Thinks of Selections",The New York Times,2 March 1938, page 14. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2007).
  12. ^Gallup Jr., Alec M. (2009).The Gallup Poll Cumulative Index: Public Opinion, 1935–1997,p. 135, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.ISBN0842025871.
  13. ^A. J. Cronin,Adventures in Two Worlds,Chapter 40 ( "Why I Believe in God," inThe Road to Damascus. Volume IV: Roads to Rome,edited by John O'Brien. London: Pinnacle Books, 1955, pp. 11–18).
  14. ^Salwak, Dale (1985).A.J. Cronin.Boston: Twayne Publishers. p. 10.ISBN978-0-8057-6884-8.
  15. ^A. J. Cronin (14 March 2013).The Minstrel Boy.Pan Macmillan. p. 293.ISBN978-1-4472-4413-4.
  16. ^Letter quoted in obituary of Cronin inLennox Herald.There is a photocopy of this obituary (undated) at"Cardross and A. J. Cronin Part 3"
  17. ^A.J. Cronin.The Ben Lomond Free Press (28 November 2007)
  18. ^"A. J. Cronin, author of 'Citadel' and 'Keys of the Kingdom', dies".New York Times.10 January 1981.Retrieved22 May2021.
  19. ^Cooper, Goolistan (6 April 2015)."Plaque for Notting Hill GP who became celebrated author".My London.Retrieved15 January2023.
  20. ^Cronin, A. J. (9 October 1937)."The Citadel".Australian Women's Weekly:8–11, 47–49.Retrieved15 January2023.The Australian Women's Weekly is proud to present the novel to its readers as a serial. You must not miss a line of it.
  21. ^This article is parodied near the end ofWilliam Gaddis's novelThe Recognitions:see entry for 857.20 athttps:// williamgaddis.org/recognitions/35anno1.shtml.The character called "the distinguished novelist," who first appears on p. 846, is based on Cronin: seeThe Letters of William Gaddis(Dalkey Archive Press, 2013), p. 386.
  22. ^Dictionary of Literary Biography
  23. ^"The Campbell Playhouse: The Citadel".Orson Welles on the Air, 1938–1946.Indiana University Bloomington. 21 January 1940.Retrieved29 July2018.

Further reading[edit]

  • Salwak, Dale. ""A. J. Cronin.Boston: Twayne's English Authors Series, 1985.ISBN0-8057-6884-X
  • Davies, Alan.A. J. Cronin: The Man Who Created Dr Finlay.Alma Books, April 2011.ISBN978-1-84688-112-1

External links[edit]

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