S. R. Crockett | |
|---|---|
 Samuel Rutherford Crockett, by Elliott & Fry | |
| Born | 24 September 1859 Little Duchrae, Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire |
| Died | 16 April 1914 (aged 54) Tarascon-sur-Rhône France |
| Resting place | Balmaghie |
| Occupation | Minister, writer |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
| Period | 1890-1914 |
| Genre | Novel, magazine and periodical serial |
| Signature | |
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Samuel Rutherford Crockett (24 September 1859 – 16 April 1914), who published under the name "S. R. Crockett", was a Scottish novelist.
He was born at Little Duchrae, Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire, Galloway on 24 September 1859, the illegitimate son of dairymaid Annie Crocket. He was raised by his Cameronian grandparents on the tenanted farm until 1867 when the family moved to Cotton Street, Castle Douglas (later fictionalised as Cairn Edward). He won the Galloway bursary to Edinburgh University in 1876, where he studied for an MA. He began his journalistic career to supplement his bursary, writing for magazines from 1877. He left University in April 1879 without formally graduating.[1] He travelled throughout Europe as a tutor between the years 1879 and 1881 returning to study for the ministry at Edinburgh's New College. He became minister of The Free Kirk Penicuik in November 1886. He married Ruth Mary Milner (daughter of George Milner) on March 10, 1887. He played a large part in gaining justice for the relatives of victims in the Mauricewood Pit Disaster of 1889.[2][3] He became a member of the Scottish Arts Club in 1894.[4] He left the ministry in January 1895 to pursue a full-time writing career.
The Crocketts had four children: Maisie Rutherford, Philip Hugh Barbour, George Milner and Margaret Douglas, all of whom featured in his children's fictions. The family moved from Bank House, Penicuik in 1906 to Torwood House, Peebles, but Crockett spent much of the year abroad and also regularly returned to Galloway.
He published a volume of poetry, Dulce Cor (Latin: Sweet Heart), under the pseudonym Ford Brereton in 1886. Dulce Cor is a ruined abbey in Galloway. In the late 1880s, he was a regular contributor to The Christian Leader magazine, under W.H. Wylie. In 1893 he was noticed by William Robertson Nicoll, and introduced to publisher T. Fisher Unwin who published a first collection of short stories and sketches under the title The Stickit Minister and some common men in 1893. It was an instant success, going into six editions within the year. He was taken on by leading London literary agent A.P.Watt, who managed his career until his death. There followed extensive publications across a range of journals, magazines, and periodicals in the UK and America and most of his 60+ serial works were subsequently published in novel form through James Clarke and Co, Hodder & Stoughton, and others.[1]
His contemporary J. M. Barrie had already created a demand for stories in Lowland Scots,[5] with his sketches of Thrums in the late 1880s. R. L. Stevenson a corresponding friend of both writers, described the relationship thus: "you are out of doors and Barrie is indoors" in a letter in 1893.
Crockett's breakthrough year occurred in 1894 when T. Fisher Unwin published no fewer than four of his works, The Raiders,[6] The Lilac Sunbonnet,[7] The PlayActress[8] and Mad Sir Uchtred of the Hills.[8]
Crockett was one of the new breed of professional writers emerging in the late 19th century whose work was written for the emerging popular "mass market" readership. As one of the foremost celebrity authors, he divided literary critics both his own time and subsequently. His fellow late-nineteenth-century novelist George Gissing for instance found his novel The Raiders "wearisome".[9] His early work was dismissed by some contemporary critics as Kailyard and it was a label that has proved hard to shift. The stigma associated with it has seen his work overlooked for many years. A reappraisal of the nebulous connection with Kailyard is beginning to be acknowledged, as evidenced by a re-appraisal of the whole Kailyard concept by writers such as Andrew Nash.[10] The mid-20th century view that his later work was "over-prolific and feebly sentimental"[11] is now being challenged. His work is much less easy to categorise than such simplification suggests, not least because it is so extensive. Most broadly it falls into an historical adventure romance genre. However, he also wrote of contemporary issues, largely from a rural perspective. He championed the rural working classes and was outspoken against all forms of hierarchy. While many of his stories are set in rural Galloway, there are also stories set in Edinburgh, Scotland, England, France, Spain, and further abroad. In the late 1890s he was commissioned to write many introductions (including Blackwood's 1895 edition of John Galt) and, for children, versions of Sir Walter Scott stories (Red Cap Tales and Red Cap Adventures). He wrote nonfiction as well, including a booklet published by the London camera manufacturer, Newman & Guardia, in 1900, comparing cameras favourably to pen and pencil and explaining how he encountered the N and G advertisement.[12] This led to the publications of a nonfiction work The Adventurer in Spain (1903) which he illustrated along with Gordon Browne. His non fiction work Raiderland[13] (1904) takes the reader into the Galloway of his youth. He was an early adopter of the typewriter. His novel Vida (1908) first serialised in The People's Friend in 1907, features what is arguably the first car chase in fiction.
In his youth, he was a mountaineer and had an interest in astronomy.
Crockett died in Tarascon, France on 16 April 1914 and was buried at Balmaghie Kirk on April 24 that year. A memorial to him was erected in Laurieston by public subscription in 1932. Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) was a benefactor.
Most of Crockett's work is now back in print.
In 2014 Ayton Publishing Limited published the 32 volume Galloway Collection, in time for the centenary of his death.[14]
The current most comprehensive list of Crockett's published work in book form amounts to 66 and is derived from Donaldson[1] and The Complete Crockett.[21] Details of original UK and US publishers are given where known. A substantial number of works have been republished since the 100th anniversary of his death and are available as print or digital versions. Most comprehensive is The Galloway Collection. Given the ephemerality of magazine publication it is impossible to give a complete list of all his serialised work or published short stories.
S.R. Crockett features as a character in Dorothy Alexander's novel, The Mauricewood Devils (2016).[3]
