The Black Country of Francis Brett Young

Abstract

Regional consciousness is of two kinds, one which is observed and measured from outside the region and another which is experienced by the people living within it. The former is a fit subject for investigation by geographers who can make a scientific appraisal of the elements which give a distinctive appearance to a region, but the second kind is more difficult to assess objectively, and since the expression of feeling is an art form, the regional novelist often proves to be more successful than the geographer in this field. Francis Brett Young is the only writer of his calibre who has selected the Black Country as the setting for a series of novels. His sensitive portraits of landscape and life in the region, seen through the eyes and emotions of the fictional characters he created, convey the personality of the place and complement geographers' studies of the demographic and economic developments which first produced and subsequently modified the character of the Black Country. THE art of describing areal differentiation within Britain during the last hundred years has been practised as much by novelists as by geographers. Drawing upon the great variety of landscapes and modes of living to be found within the confines of a comparatively small island, many British writers have chosen to emphasize the influence of real localities upon the life and action of their fictitious characters. The burgeoning of the regional novel was largely coincident with, and probably assisted by, dramatic improvements in communications across the surface of Britain by railways and roads. Towards the end of the nineteenth century many novelists preferred a

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