Profile of A.J. Cronin on Famous Like Me

A. J. Cronin is the pen-name of the Scottish novelist Archibald Joseph Cronin (July 19, 1896-January 9, 1981). He is remembered chiefly as the author of The Citadel and The Keys of the Kingdom, both of which were translated into Oscar-nominated films. His Dr. Finlay stories, which were based on characters from his autobiography, Adventures in Two Worlds, became a long-running BBC drama series.

Born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire (now in Argyll and Bute), Scotland, Cronin was the only child of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother and would later often 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 advanced degrees.

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 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 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 very successful practice on Harley Street. While on holiday in the Scottish Highlands, Cronin wrote his first novel, Hatter's Castle, with which he achieved instant success. It tells the story of a family brought to ruin by the pride, stubbornness and bigotry of its patriarch.

Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers that were translated into numerous languages. His strengths were 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 the United Kingdom by exposing the injustice, exploitation 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. He later returned to Europe and for the last twenty-five years of his life, he lived in Switzerland, continuing to write into his eighties and basing novels like The Judas Tree partly in his new home. He died on January 9, 1981, in Montreux, Switzerland.

Bibliography

Many of the following books were made into films under the same title:

• Hatter's Castle (1931) (ISBN 9997403789)
• Three Loves (1932) (ISBN 0575000694)
• Grand Canary (1933) (ISBN 0575016078)
• The Stars Look Down (1935) (ISBN 045000497X)
• The Citadel (1938) (ISBN 0316161837)
• Lady with Carnations (1939) (ISBN 0575021942)
• Jupiter Laughs: A play in three acts (1940) (ISBN B0007J5ZO0) filmed as Shining Victory (1941)
• Vigil in the Night (1940)
• The Keys of the Kingdom (1942) (ISBN 0316161845)
• The Green Years (1944) (ISBN 0575004797)
• The Adventures of a Black Bag (1946)
• Shannon's Way (1948)
• The Spanish Gardener (1950)
• Adventures in Two Worlds (1952)
• Beyond This Place (aka Web of Evidence, 1953)
• Crusader's Tomb (1956)
• A Thing of Beauty (1956)
• The Northern Light (1958)
• The Native Doctor (aka An Apple in Eden, 1959)
• The Judas Tree (1961)
• The Innkeeper's Wife (1962)
• A Song of Sixpence (1964)
• A Question of Modernity (1966)
• A Pocketful of Rye (1969)
• Enchanted Snow (1971)
• The Minstrel Boy (1975)
• Desmonde (1975)
• Gracie Lindsay (1978)
• Short Stories from Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1979)
• Doctor Finlay of Tannochbrae (1985)

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