Correspondence of Rev. Canon Andrew John Young

The collection is composed of letters and postcards to close friends John Freeman and John Arlott, as well as analyses of religious questions in poetry. There are circa 20 autograph letters and 10 signed letters to Freeman, 1922-1927, and circa 100 autograph letters to Arlott from the 1940s to the 1970s. The collection also includes BBC typescript broadcasts on The search for flowers, Some rare flowers of the west, W. H. Hudson, Robert Burns, and Beaumont and Fletcher. There are also manuscript copies of poems such as The bleeding nun and The Erme.

Andrew John Young was born in 1885. He was a native of Elgin and was educated at Edinburgh's Royal High School. He studied at Edinburgh University and New College, gaining his MA in 1907. Young was ordained as a Minister of the United Free Church of Scotland at Temple, Midlothian, but in 1939 he entered the Church of England and became the Vicar of Stonegate, Sussex. In 1948, he was made Canon of Chichester Cathedral. In addition to his life as a parson, Young was a poet and was interested in fine art and British wild flowers. His publications of prose writing includeA prospect of flowers(1945), andA retrospect of flowers(1950), and his poetry includesWinter harvest(1933),The white blackbird(1933),Into Hades(1952), andOut of the world and back(1958). He also wroteThe poet and the landscape(1962). He was awarded a silver medal by the Royal Society of Literature in 1940, and in 1944 he was an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1951 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Edinburgh University. The Rev. Canon Andrew John Young died at Arundel on 25 November 1971.

This collection is open for consultation. Please contact the repository in advance.

Accession no. E93.58.

Important finding aids generally are: the alphabetical Index to Manuscripts held at Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections and Archives, consisting of typed slips in sheaf binders and to which additions were made until 1987; and the Index to Accessions Since 1987.

Check the local Indexes for details of any additions.