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How does a writer chiefly famed for his regional novels of Birmingham, the Black Country and its green borderlands achieve fame and popularity as far afield as USA, Australia and South Africa? This comprehensive study brings together for the first time the whole range of Francis Brett Young’s published writing, with the comments (not always favourable) of the earliest critics and the author’s own mature reflections from the Severn Edition prefaces. Forty-five major published works, with further short stories, poems and articles from newspapers, magazines and anthologies are traced through numerous editions, translations, serialisations, adaptations for film, television, radio, talking books, and musical settings. There are clues as to the people Young admired: those whose writings he selected as definitive quotations; those to whom his books were dedicated: the former ranging from Aeschylus to Lewis Carroll, the latter from his student landlady to a brace of prime ministers. With over eleven hundred entries The Published Works of Francis Brett Young provides a fascinating insight into a neglected literary career throughout the first half of the twentieth century and beyond.

Michael Hall lives in Hales Owen, Francis Brett Young’s birthplace, and is a retired Deputy Head Teacher. Chairman of the Francis Brett Young Society, he edited the teaching and learning pack Francis Brett Young – Novelist of the Midlands, and wrote and presented the video Francis Brett Young’s Black Country. He is the author of several books of local history and his biography Francis Brett Young was published in 1997.

£9.50 plus £2.25 p&p

tanga

Tanga Letters To Jessie contains unpublished letters written by Francis Brett Young to his wife during General Smuts’ 1916 campaign in German East Africa. Although a number of the letters came from Nairobi and other places they are all connected with General Smuts’ famous march on Tanga and display an artist’s vision not only of war but of nature, animals and a rich gallery of human beings, Africans, Europeans, South Africans, and Indians. The vision is vivid, unprejudiced and humorous. The letters also cast a revealing light on the unusually mutual and complete devotion of Francis and Jessie.


Jacques Leclaire is Emeritus Professor at the University of Rouen. His interest in Francis Brett Young goes back to the early 1960s and his Doctoral dissertation was published as Un Témoin de I’Avènement de l’Angleterre Contemporaine: Francis Brett Young in 1969. It was later translated for the Francis Brett Young Society by Jacqueline Ivell as Francis Brett Young, Physician, Poet, Novelist. His main line of study is Twentieth Century fiction. Arising from Francis’s African novels comes a special interest in new literature in English, African, Australasian and mainly Canadian. Professor Leclaire is Past President of the Francis Brett Young Society and currently lives in Brest in Brittany.

£9.50 plus £2.25 p&p


Buy both the above books for £18 plus £4.75 p&p

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