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Francis Brett Young (June 29, 1884 – March 28, 1954) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and composer.


Brett Young was born in Halesowen, West Midlands. He schooled first at a private school in Sutton Coldfield. His father was a doctor and his mother also came from a medical family, so it was natural that Brett Young go to the school for the sons of doctors, Epson College. He was there when, at fourteen, he suffered the death of his beloved mother. He later went on to train at the University of Birmingham to become a qualified physician. He met his wife Jessie Hankinson while he was lodging at Edgbaston in Birmingham and she was training at Anstey College of Physical Education, then housed in the building on the nearby The Leasowes (the former home of William Shenstone, the author most admired by Brett Young).

He started medical practice on the steamship S.S. Kintuck, on a long voyage to the Far East. He returned with the money to purchase his own medical practice at Cleveland House, Brixham, Devon, in 1907. Established in his first secure job, he was able to be secretly married to Jessie Hankinson in December 1908. Jessie was also a singer and he accompanied her, as well as composing two sets of songs for her, published in 1912 and 1913. His first attempt at a novel, Undergrowth, was a collaboration with his brother, Eric.

During the First World War he saw service in German East Africa in the Medical Corps, but was invalided out in 1918, and no longer able to practice medicine. His own account of these wartime events are given in his book Marching on Tanga - passages censored from that book were later covertly used in his novel Jim Redlake. Brett Young fell a victim to dysentery and fever and, by the time he was invalided out of the area towards the end of the year, the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment had been reduced from some 600 rifles to 50 and had lost all their transport animals. This is a classic account of a little-known campaign in World War I.