A J Cronin summary
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A.J. Cronin, in full Archibald Joseph Cronin, (born July 19, 1896, Car dross, Cambridgeshire, Scot.—died Jan. 6, 1981, Montreal, Switz.), Scottish novelist and physician whose works combining realism with social criticism won a large Anglo-American readership.
Cronin was educated at the University of Glasgow and served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy during World War I. He practiced in South Wales (1921–24) and then, as medical inspector of mines, investigated occupational diseases in the coal industry. He opened medical practice in London in 1926 but quit because of ill health, using his leisure to write his first novel, Hatter’s Castle (1931; filmed 1941), the story of a Scottish hat maker obsessed with the idea of the possibility of his noble birth. This book was an immediate success in Britain.