Life
1741-1820; b. 11 Sept.; son of vicar of Bradfield, Suffolk and prependary
of Canterbury, married to Miss Cousmaker, of Dutch descent; grammar school
in Lavenham; apprencticed to firm at Lynn; father d. 1759; unsuccessfully
attempted to launch magazine, Universal Museum; married Martha
Allen (d.1815), whose life was ‘a scene of worrying, time trifled
with, a book never looked in, quarrels and irritation never subsiding’;
took farm of his own [DNB 1768], the estate at Bradfield being settled
on his mother; not very successful as farmer; advocated large-scale agriculture
Farmers’ Letters to the People of England (1767); Political
Arithmetic (1774), trans. into four languages; Fanny Burney wrote
that he ‘destroyed his fortune by experiments’ and calls him
‘almost destitute’ (Diaries); first visit to Ireland
suggested by Shelburne, Marq. of Landsdowne, 1776; arrive Dunleary, 20
June 1996; received introductions from Burke and others; his Tour of
Ireland (1780) chiefly a record of this journey, making ‘general
observagions on the present state of that kingdom, made in the years 1776,
1777, and 1778; served as agent to Lord Kingsborough in Co. Cork [owner
of the Mitchelstown estate], 1777-79, though separated through disagreements;
Tour in Ireland (1780), in which he noted a steep rise in prosperity
as indicated by a double of to £5,293,312 in twenty-five years; Young’s
Autobiography, ed. A. W. Hutton (1898), contains anecdotes of Ireland;
there is a modern life by J. G. Gazely (1973); there is a amusing portrait
of Young in Fanny Burney’s Camilla (1796); note also that the Tour is cited in The Absentee as the book that Sir James Brooke recommends Colambre to read on his arrival in the country. DNB
FDA OCIL
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Works
Tour of Ireland 1776-1779 (1780); Constantia Maxwell, sel. ed.,
Tour of Ireland: Irish History from Contemporary Sources (London:
Allen & Unwin 1925); Do., ed. A. W. Hutton, [facs. rep. edn.]
2 vols. (IUP 1970); and Do. [facs. edn.], (Blackstaff 1983), 244pp.; Tour
of Ireland [rep. edn.] (Blackstaff 1983); Annals of Agriculture,
47 vols. (1784-1809), and parts of another vol., 1812 and 1813; Miss Betham-Edwards,
ed., Young’s Autobiography (1898).
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Notes
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (1880),(World
Classics Edn., ed. George Watson, 1964; 1969, p.97.
Constantia Maxwell, ‘Arthur Young, English farmer and Agriculturist’, Chap. XIV, The Stranger in Ireland (1954), pp.163-78.
Estyn Evans, in Irish Folk Ways (1957), p.46.
John Philip Cohane, The Indestructible Irish (NY: Hawthorn Books 1969).
Allen Feldman, with Eamonn O’Doherty, The Northern Fiddler (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1979), Preface.
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography gives bio-dates 1741-1820; son of prependary of Canterbury and namesake [DNB q.v.] Tour
in Ireland (1780); also Travels in France (1792); and fdn.
ed. of Universal Museum, monthly magazine, Lon. (1792) His economic
papers included Observations on the Present State of the Waste Lands
of Great Britain (1773); took farm in Hertfordshire, 1768;
left materials for a great work entitled Elements and Practice of Agriculture.
Travels in France includes the phrase, ‘the magic of property
turns sand into gold.’ See also Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish &
Fíor Ghael, 1986, pp.79-80.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry 1991), Vol. 1, describes him as a land agent for Kingsborough estate, Co. Cork, 1777. biog. John G. Gazley, The Life of Arthur Young 1741-1820 (Phil. 1973).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)