Archibald Joseph Cronin (July 19, 1896 in Cardross, Scotland; January 6, 1981 in Glion, Switzerland) was a Scottish physician and writer. Some of his novels became international successes. His narrative is characterized by exciting plots, realistic characters, and pronounced social criticism. In his autobiography, Adventures in Two Worlds, he also unequivocally professes his Christian faith. Cronin follows the tradition of the Bildungsroman and uses the techniques of Victorian novel realism.
Archibald Joseph Cronin was born the only child of Patrick Cronin and his wife, Jessie Montgomerie. He later attended Dumbarton Academy and won several writing competitions. For his outstanding achievements, he was awarded a medical scholarship to the University of Glasgow. There he met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson, who, like him, was studying medicine.
Cronin initially worked in various hospitals, as a ship’s doctor, and during the First World War as a surgeon in the service of the British Army. After the war, he practiced in a mining district in South Wales. Experiences from this work later flowed into his novels The Stars Look Down (1935) and The Citadel (1937). He later moved to London and ran a successful practice on Harley Street. However, Cronin struggled with his mundane desires for profit and self-interest, as he explains in his autobiography. While on vacation in the Scottish Highlands, he wrote his first novel, Hatter’s Castle (1930), which was an immediate success. In the 1930s, Cronin moved to the United States with his wife and three sons, settling in New Canaan, Connecticut. He later returned to Europe and has lived in Switzerland for the past 25 years.
A.J. Cronin died at the age of 84 and was buried in La Tour-de-Peilz, where his grave still stands.