A J Cronin Views
Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896–6 January 1981) was a Scottish physician and novelist.[1] 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.
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 and commercial 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.
By contrast, according to one of Cronin's biographers, Alan Davies, the book's reception was 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 ripping off their equally well-off patients. Some, more sensibly, pointed to the lack of balance between criticism and praise for hard working doctors. The majority accepted it for what is was - a perceptive, topical novel. The press, typically, attempted to incite passions within the profession in an attempt to sell copy, while Victor Gollancz, Cronin's publisher, followed suit in an attempt to promote the book; all conveniently (or purposely) overlooking the fact that it was a work of fiction, not a scientific piece of research, and not autobiographical.
Cronin died on 6 January 1981 in Montreux, and is interred at La Tour-de-Peilz. Many of Cronin's writings, including published and unpublished literary manuscripts, drafts, letters, school exercise books and essays, laboratory books, and his M.D. thesis, are held at the National Library of Scotland and at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.
A J Cronin Images
