Life
1876- ; [Alexander Bell Filson Young]; b. Ballyeaston, Co. Antrim; son
of Rev. W. Young of Portaferry; war correspondent, musician, journalist
and soldier; acted as reader to Grant Richards and in that capacity agreed
to publish Dubliners; issued various works incl. Ireland at
the Cross Roads (1903) and When the Tide Turns (1908),as well
as a work on the Titanic. IF FDA
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Notes
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919),
lists When the Tide Turns (Grant Richards 1908), a novel with a
sophisticated plot having to do with decadent liaisons, partly set in
Strangford Lough, Co. Down, in which Rupert Savage, an irish Protestent,
falls in love with Catholic Lady Fastnet, and moves into Bohemian society
in Londo; forms liaison with Mrs. Graeme; ostracised after committing
foolish and immoral act; refuges in Spain with Graeme and a disreputable
poet, Midwood.
Ulster Libraries: Univ. of Ulster Library holds Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery, a Narrative by Filson Young, with a note on the navigation of Columbus’s First Voyage by the Earl of Dunraven [3rd ed.] (Grant Richards 1911), 464pp., maps, ports, list of authorities. Belfast Linenhall Library holds Ireland at the Cross Roads (1904); Letters from Solitude And Other Essays (1912). Booksellers: Hyland Books (Cat. 219; 1995) lists Memory Harbour (1st edn. 1909).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, p.704: Frederick Ryan indicts the failure of Young and Horace Plunkett to recognise the ‘absolutely necessary step of winning self-government’; ftn. Filson Young, Ireland at the Crossroads, An Essay in Explanation (Richards 1903); review of same by Dr. Walter McDonald of Maynooth in Freeman’s Journal quoted 705. See also Irish Book Lover 4, 9, 13.
John Wilson Foster, ed., Titanic, Penguin 1999, p.78;
see also ‘The Miracle’, quoted in Foster, op. cit., pp.13-16.
Richard Ellmann (James Joyce, 1959) makes reference to Filson’s
work as reader for Grant Richard, the London-based publisher: ‘[...]
Grant Richards, somewhat startled at receiving from Trieste a book called
Dubliners, liked it himself and, when his reader Filson Young agreed, he
accepted it on February 17, 1906, and signed a contract fro it in March.’ (Ellmann, James Joyce [1959] 1965 Pb. Edn, p.227.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)