A. J. Cronin

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A. J. Cronin
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, including Vincent and Patrick

Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist.[2] His best-known novel is The Citadel (1937), about a Scottish doctor who serves in a Welsh mining village 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 doctor in Harley Street. The book exposed unfairness and malpractice in British medicine and helped to inspire the National Health Service. [3]

Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996.[4]

Early life

Rosebank Cottage, Cronin's birthplace

Cronin was born in

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 and commercial traveller, died of tuberculosis. He and his mother moved to her parents' home in Dumbarton, and she soon became a public health inspector in Glasgow
.

Cronin was not only a precocious student at Dumbarton Academy,[5] who won prizes in writing competitions, but an excellent athlete and association 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 to

dissertation entitled "The History of Aneurysm
".

Medical career

During the

collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal-dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were 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, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening a busy medical practice of his own in Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer for the Whiteleys department store at the time and had an increasing interest in ophthalmology
.

Writing career

A. J. Cronin in 1931

In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed with a chronic

ulcer and told to take six months' complete rest in the country on a milk diet. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne he 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 composed Hatter's Castle in the span of three months and quickly had it accepted by Gollancz, 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 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 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 a Member 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 the

Second World War he worked for the British Ministry of Information
, writing articles as well as participating in radio broadcasts to foreign countries.

Influence of The Citadel

guinea-snatching and the bamboozling of patients to an art form."[7] Cronin and Aneurin Bevan had both worked at the Tredegar Cottage Hospital in 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 get The Citadel banned. 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 historian Raphael Samuel, the popularity of Cronin's novels played a major role in the Labour 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, while Victor Gollancz followed 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 States The Citadel won the

Gallup poll taken in 1939, The Citadel was voted the most interesting book readers had ever read.[12]

Religion

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 physical

zoologist to 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 the first primitive life-form from lifeless matter. 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

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.

proofread his manuscripts. Their first son, Vincent, was born in Tredegar in 1924. Their second, Patrick, was born in London
in 1926, and Andrew, their youngest, in London in 1937.

With his stories being adapted for

Bel Air, California, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Blue Hill, Maine.[15] In 1945, the Cronins sailed back to England aboard the RMS Queen Mary, staying briefly in Hove and then in Raheny, Ireland, before returning to the US the following year. They took up residence at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City and then in Deerfield, Massachusetts, before settling in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1947. Cronin also travelled frequently to summer homes in Bermuda and Cap-d'Ail
, France.

Later years

Ultimately Cronin returned to Europe, to reside in Lucerne and Montreux, Switzerland, for the last 25 years of his life. He continued to write into his eighties. He included among his friends Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin and Audrey Hepburn, to whose first son he was a godfather. Richard E. Berlin was 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 the

Rock.... I even follow with great fervour the fortunes of the Dumbarton 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 at

University 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

Bibliography

Cronin blue plaque

Selected periodical publications

Film adaptations

Selected television credits

Selected radio credits

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Before 16 May 1975 Cardross was in Dunbartonshire
  2. ^ "AJ Cronin". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  3. ^ "A.J. Cronin: Biography on Undiscovered Scotland". www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
  4. ^ "All about the doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland". The National. 3 January 2021. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
  5. ^ a b Liukkonen, Petri. "A. J. Cronin". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 25 April 2011.
  6. ^ MacPherson, Hamish (3 January 2021). "AJ Cronin: The doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland". The National. Glasgow. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  7. ^
    ISBN 1852834714
  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. ^ a b "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. ISBN 0842025871
    .
  13. ^ A. J. Cronin, Adventures in Two Worlds, Chapter 40 ("Why I Believe in God," in The Road to Damascus. Volume IV: Roads to Rome, edited by John O'Brien. London: Pinnacle Books, 1955, pp. 11–18).
  14. ISBN 978-0-8057-6884-8
    .
  15. ISBN 978-1-4472-4413-4
    .
  16. ^ Letter quoted in obituary of Cronin in Lennox 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. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  19. ^ Cooper, Goolistan (6 April 2015). "Plaque for Notting Hill GP who became celebrated author". My London. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  20. ^ Cronin, A. J. (9 October 1937). "The Citadel". Australian Women's Weekly: 8–11, 47–49. Retrieved 15 January 2023. 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 of William Gaddis's novel The Recognitions: see entry for 857.20 at https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/35anno1.shtml. The character called "the distinguished novelist," who first appears on p. 846, is based on Cronin: see The 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. Retrieved 29 July 2018.

Further reading

External links

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