A J CRONIN INTRODUCTION Archibald Joseph Cronin, MB, Chb, MD, DPH, MRCP (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981) Was a Scottish Physician and Novelist
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A J CRONIN INTRODUCTION Archibald Joseph Cronin, MB, ChB, MD, DPH, MRCP (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981) was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film. He also created the Dr. Finlay character, the hero of a series of stories that served as the basis for the popular BBC television and radio series entitled Dr. Finlay's Casebook. Early life Cronin was born at Rosebank Cottage in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, the only child of a Protestant mother, Jessie Cronin (née Montgomerie), and a Catholic father of Irish extraction, Patrick Cronin, and would later write of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. His paternal grandparents were the proprietors of a public house in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire. His maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage, Cronin's parents moved to Helensburgh, where he attended Grant Street School. When he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent andcommercial traveller, died from tuberculosis. He and his mother moved to her parents' home in Dumbarton, and she soon became the first female public health inspector in Scotland. Early life Cronin was not only a precocious student at Dumbarton Academy who won many prizes and writing competitions, but also an excellent athlete and footballer. From an early age, he was an avid golfer, a sport he enjoyed throughout his life, and he loved salmon fishing as well. The family later moved to Yorkhill, Glasgow, where he attended St Aloysius College in the Garnethill area 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 for either the church or medicine was settled by Cronin himself, who chose "the lesser of two evils." He won a Carnegie scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1914. He was absent during the 1916-1917 session for naval service. In 1919 he graduated with highest honours, with the degree of MB, ChB. Later that year he made a trip to India as ship's surgeon on a liner. Cronin went on to earn additional degrees, including a Diploma in Public Health (1923) and hisMRCP (1924). In 1925, he was awarded an M.D. from the University of Glasgow for his dissertation, entitled "The History of Aneurysm." Medical career During World War I Cronin served as a Surgeon Sub- Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war, he trained at various hospitals including Bellahouston and Lightburn Hospitals in Glasgow and Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, before taking up his first practice in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924, he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain, and over the next few years, his survey of medical regulations in collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were published. He was involved in the disaster at Ystfad Colliery in Pengelly, where thirty-eight miners were drowned and the remaining twenty-three were rescued after eight days. Cronin drew on this haunting experience and his research of the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels The Citadel, set in Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening his own thriving medical practice at 152,Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer forWhiteleys at this time and was becoming increasingly interested in ophthalmology. Writing career In 1930, after being diagnosed with a chronic duodenal ulcer, Cronin was told he must take six months complete rest in the country on a milk diet. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne, he was finally able to indulge his lifelong desire to write a novel, having theretofore "written nothing but prescriptions and scientific papers". From Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton to research the background of the novel, using the files of Dumbarton Library, which still has the letter from Cronin requesting advice on this. He composed Hatter's Castle in the span of three months, and the manuscript was quickly accepted by Gollancz, the only publishing house to which it had been submitted (apparently chosen when his wife randomly stuck a pin into a list of publishers). This novel, which was an immediate and sensational success, launched his career as a prolific author, and he never returned to practising medicine. Writing career Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers which were translated into numerous languages. His strengths included his compelling narrative skill and his powers of acute observation and graphic description. Although noted for its deep social conscience, his work is filled with colourful characters and witty dialogue. Some of his stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing 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 earliest novels, The Stars Look Down, chronicles transgressions in a mining community in Northeast England and an ambitious miner's rise to be a Member of Parliament. Cronin's humanism continues to inspire - the film Billy Elliot was partly drawn from The Stars Look Down, and the opening song of Billy Elliot the Musical is entitled thus as a tribute. Through the years, Cronin's body of work has influenced many people to become writers or to enter the medical profession, including Giorgio Armani, who planned to become a doctor before becoming a designer. Writing career A prodigiously fast writer, Cronin liked to average 5,000 words a day, meticulously planning the details of his plots in advance. 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. Cronin also contributed a large number of stories and essays to various international publications. Family It was at university that Cronin met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson (May), who was also a medical student. She was the daughter of Robert Gibson, a master baker, and Agnes Thomson Gibson (née Gilchrist) of Hamilton, Lanarkshire. The couple married on 31 August 1921. As a doctor, May worked with her husband briefly in the dispensary while he was employed by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society; she also assisted him with his practice in London. When he became an author, she would proofread his manuscripts. Their first son, Vincent, was born in Tredegar in 1924. Their second son, Patrick, was born in London in 1926. Andrew, their youngest son, was born in London in 1937. With his stories being adapted to Hollywood films, Cronin and his family moved to the United States in 1939, living in Bel Air, California, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Blue Hill, Maine. In 1945, the Cronins sailed back to England aboard the RMS Queen Mary, where they stayed briefly in Hove and then in Raheny, Ireland before returning to the U.S. the following year. They subsequently took up residence at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City and then in Deerfield, Massachusetts before settling in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1947. Ever the nomad, Cronin also frequently travelled to his homes in Bermuda and Cap-d'Ail, France, where he summered. Honours . National Book Award (U.S.), Favorite Novel of 1937, for The Citadel . D.Litt. from Bowdoin College and Lafayette College .