Francis Brett Young
Francis Brett Young was an English author and physician born on June 29, 1884, in Halesowen, England. The eldest of four children, he demonstrated academic promise early, earning a scholarship to Epsom College and later studying medicine at Birmingham University. After graduating in 1906, he worked as a ship's surgeon before becoming a general practitioner in Devon. Young began his writing career while in medical school, publishing poetry and stories, and later produced his first novel at the age of 29. His experiences during World War I, particularly serving as a medical officer in East Africa, led him to transition from medicine to a full-time writing career. Throughout the 1920s, he lived on the Italian island of Capri, mingling with literary figures like F. Scott Fitzgerald and D. H. Lawrence. Young's notable works include the award-winning novel "Portrait of Clare," published in 1927, which marked a significant success in his literary career. He passed away in Cape Town, South Africa, on March 28, 1954.
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Subject Terms
Francis Brett Young
Novelist
- Born: June 29, 1884
- Birthplace: The Laurels, Halesowen, England
- Died: March 28, 1954
- Place of death: Cape Town, South Africa
Biography
Francis Brett Young was born on June 29, 1884, at The Laurels, in Halesowen, England, to Dr. T. Brett Young and Annie Elizabeth Young (née Jackson). The oldest of four children (his siblings Doris, Eric, and Joyce, following, respectively, in 1891, 1893, and 1895), Francis showed promise in a number of areas; by the time he was school-bound, he won a scholarship to Epsom College, near London. In 1900, he entered Birmingham University as a medical student. Here is where the teen began writing—poems, stories, and poems set to music—and where he joined the college’s artistic medical student group.
With a degree in medicine, which he earned in 1906, Young immediately began his practice as a ship’s surgeon aboard the SS Kintuck. By 1907, he had become a general practitioner in Brixham, Devon. A year later, Young eloped with singer Jessie Hankinson, whom he had met at a student dance in 1904. They were wed in Rowberrow Church in Somerset.
At twenty-nine, Young published his first novel and a year later, in 1914, a study of the poetry of Robert Bridges—both works written with his brother Eric. With his ample knowledge of fishermen’s living conditions, the experiences of iron manufacturers, the implications of World War I, and other social concerns, Young published a third work, Deep Sea, in 1914, followed by several more in the following years.
By 1916, Young was a medical officer serving for the campaign of General Jan Christian Smuts in German East Africa (Tanzania). When Young was released as an invalid with malaria, the experience influenced him to switch from medicine to writing for a living. This decision and the time he spent in East Africa contributed to his next works, two volumes of poetry, published in 1917 and 1919. In 1919, he published The Young Physician, which features moments that call back to his mother, who had died in 1898.
Because he needed more recuperation, Young’s publisher encouraged the move he and his wife made to the Italian island of Capri, where the climate and the cost of living afforded more comfort for him and his wife. From 1919 to 1929, the couple lived on the island, where they socialized with such notables as Edwin Cerio, Norman Douglas, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Frieda and D. H. Lawrence, among other friends. The couple took trips to the United States and South Africa and in 1932 settled in England, where their friends included John Drinkwater, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells.
In 1923, the thirty-nine-year-old attended his first of many PEN dinners. In 1927, Young published his first successful novel—created as a response to the “obsessions of D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce” and which he determined would be “a book about normal people with normal reactions”—Portrait of Clare. The novel earned Young the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and many critics called it his best work. Further success would result from the numerous works he wrote over the following decades. Young died in Cape Town, South Africa, on March 28, 1954.