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1884-1954
Novelist, short-story writer and poet, born in Halesowen. His father was a doctor and his mother also came from a medical family so it was natural that Francis trained at Birmingham University to become a physician. He started practice at Brixham, Devon, in 1907 and married the following year. His wife was a singer and he accompanied her as well as setting poems to music for her. During the First World War he saw service in Africa in the Medical Corps but was invalided out in 1918, no longer able to practice medicine. The couple went to live in Capri until 1929 but travelled widely, including trips to South Africa, the United States and summers in the Lake District of England. They returned to live in England from 1932 and settled at Craycombe House, Fladbury, Worcestershire. At the end of Second World War he moved to South Africa, dying in Cape Town in 1954. His ashes were returned to England and are in Worcester Cathedral.
He is best remembered for Portrait of Clare (1927) which was awarded the James Tait Memorial Prize. Like many authors he uses the places and occupations he knew as the backdrops for his work. There is much description of the sea, war and medical practice set in places as far apart as the Midlands and West Country of England and South Africa. His first published novel Deep sea (1914) has Brixham as a background while Portrait of Clare is set in the West Midlands, as are several of his works from this period. The iron age (1916) is set partly in Ludlow, Shropshire.
His style has been described as possessing a leisurely charm combining softness and sentimentality. John Masefield recognised his early promise by calling him:-
"the most gifted, most interesting and most beautiful of mind among the younger men writing English"
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
The black diamond (1921)
Black roses (1929)
Christmas box
The city of gold (1939)
Cold harbour (1924)
Dark tower (1914)
Deep sea (1914)
Dr. Bradley remembers (1938)
Far forest (1936)
The house under the water (1932)
The island (1944)
Jim Redlake (1930)
The man about the house (1942)
Marching on Tanga (1918)
Mr. and Mrs. Pennington (1931)
Mr Lucton's freedom
My brother Jonathan (1928)
Pilgrim's rest
Poems 1916-1918 (1919)
Portrait of a village (1937)
Portrait of Clare (1927)
The red knight (1921)
Sea horses (1925)
They seek a country (1937)
This little world
The tragic bride (1920)
White ladies (1935)
Wistanslow
Woodsmoke (1924)
The young physician (1919)
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Francis Brett Young: physician, poet, novelist by
Jacques Leclaire
The world of Francis Brett Young by Jacques Leclaire
Francis Brett Young by E.G. Twitchett
Francis Brett Young by Jessica Brett Young
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 28 October 2002
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