Francis Brett Young

The Tragic Bride (Dodo Press) Francis Brett Young

Francis Brett Young (1884-1954) was an English novelist, poet, and composer. His first published novel Deep Sea (1914) has Brixham as a background while Portrait of Clare (1927) 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. The central project of Brett Young's career was a series of linked novels set in a loosely fictionalised version of the English West Midlands and Welsh Borders. The Mercian novels were originally inspired by the construction of Birmingham Corporation's Elan Valley Reservoirs from 1893-1904, and the country traversed by their associated aqueduct. The Black Diamond (1921) tells the story of a labourer working on the aqueduct in the region around Knighton, while The House Under the Water (1932) deals at length with the construction of the reservoirs themselves. Although linked by recurring characters, each of the Mercian novels can be read as an independent work. They range in style from the atmospheric psychological horror of Cold Harbour (1924) to the romantic family saga of Portrait of Clare (1927), which won that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize.