Arthur Young
Arthur Young was an influential English agriculturalist and writer, born on September 11, 1741, in Whitehall, London. Raised in Bradfield Combust, he had a challenging start in education, which led him to pursue an apprenticeship with a wine merchant. Young's passion for agriculture blossomed after he took on a small farm, prompting extensive research into agricultural techniques. He gained recognition through his travel accounts, including his notable works documenting his explorations in England, Wales, and France, which also captured the social and political climate leading up to the French Revolution.
Despite his success, Young faced personal struggles, including a tumultuous marriage and financial difficulties. His contributions to agricultural literature, particularly the "Farmer's Calendar," and his role as editor of the "Annals of Agriculture" solidified his legacy in the field. Young's later years were marked by his conversion to evangelicalism and his involvement with the Clapham sect. He passed away on April 12, 1820, in London, leaving a significant impact on agricultural practices and literature of his time.
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Arthur Young
Writer
- Born: September 11, 1741
- Birthplace: Whitehall, London, England
- Died: April 12, 1820
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Arthur Young was born on September 11, 1741, in Whitehall, London, England, but was raised at Bradfield Combust near Bury St. Edmunds, where his father was the rector. His mother, the former Anna Lucretia de Cousmaker, had brought a vast dowry to the family. The youngest of three children, Arthur was sent to a school in Lavenham, which he castigated as a “wretched place” that had failed him. He was removed in 1758 to be apprenticed to a firm of wine merchants in King’s Lynn, with the intention that he should eventually take over a similar firm in London run by his sister’s husband John Tomlinson, but her premature death ended the plan. Arthur bitterly regretted not having followed his elder brother John to university.
Young became a keen book collector, writing his first pamphlet in 1758—The Theatre of the Present War in North America—in order to be paid in books. His second pamphlet, The Present State of Affairs at Home and Abroad (1759), was less successful. When he completed his apprenticeship in 1761, he went to London, where he founded a monthly periodical, the Universal Museum, but had to abandon it. After he suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage in 1963, his brother offered him the tenancy of a small farm near Bradfield. Young immediately began reading up on agricultural techniques and soon became an expert—in theory, if not in practice.
On July 1, 1965, Young married Martha Allen, the daughter of a wealthy King’s Lynn family. They moved to a larger farm in Essex in 1766 and had three daughters and a son, but the marriage went sour as Martha despaired of competing with her husband’s obsession for agriculture, which often took him away on investigative tours. She became hostile, depressed, and eventually deranged—all of which encouraged him to stay away for even longer periods. The farm failed in 1771, but Young’s tours had already generated some popular works: the 1768 A Six Weeks’ Tour Through the Southern Counties of England and Wales, followed by A Six Months’ Tour Through the North of England (1770) and A Farmer’s Tour Through the East of England (1771). Young’s work had affinities with that of William Cobbett, and though it was not read for its insights into agricultural methodology, it secured his fortunes.
Young’s travels took him to Ireland in 1776-1778, and then to France. His report of the second series of expeditions became his most famous work (Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789, 1792), providing a fascinating account of the buildup to the French Revolution (which alarmed him and moved him to write several pamphlets warning against similar trends in Britain, although he corresponded with such radicals as Jeremy Bentham and Joseph Priestley). He wrote numerous papers for the Annals of Agriculture, which he edited after 1783. His almanac-substitute, the Farmer’s Calendar, launched in 1771, went through more than two hundred editions. In 1793, he was elected secretary to the Board of Agriculture, but he went blind in 1811. He became a convert to extreme evangelical views and joined William Wilberforce’s “Clapham sect.” Young died on April 12, 1820, in London.