Archibald Joseph Cronin

Born July 19, 1896, in Cardross, Scotland. English writer. Born into a poor Irish Catholic family, he was raised by his mother’s parents, who were Protestant. Physician by profession.

Cronin published his first novel, Hatter’s Castle, in 1931 (Russian translation, 1938); it is the tragic story of a typical bourgeois proprietor and the ramifications of his despotism on his family. The central character of his most important social novel, The Stars Look Down (1935; Russian translation, 1937), comes from the people. Developing the traditions of critical realism, Cronin exposed capitalists and opportunistic leaders of the Labour Party. The novel The Citadel (1937; Russian translation, 1940) reveals the dichotomy between science and the capitalist thirst for profits; to a large extent the character of Dr. Manson is autobiographical.

Cronin lived in the USA during World War II. The novel The Keys of the Kingdom (1941) demonstrates his Utopian religious ideas. In his only play, Jupiter Laughs (1940; Russian translation, 1957), bourgeois egoism is juxtaposed to abstract humanist ideals. The tragic fate in contemporary bourgeois society of an artist and of an independent publisher of a liberal newspaper is the subject of the novels Crusader’s Tomb (1956; Russian translation, 1960) and Northern Light (1958; Russian translation, 1959).