Birth and Early Life
Young was born in 1741 at Bradfield Combust, Suffolk, the second son of the Rev. Arthur Young, who was chaplain to Speaker Arthur Onslow. After attending school at Lavenham, Arthur Young was in 1758 placed in a mercantile house at King's Lynn, but had no interest in commerce.
At the age of seventeen, he published a pamphlet On the War in North America, and in 1761 went to London and started a magazine entitled The Universal Museum, which was dropped on the advice of Samuel Johnson.
He also wrote four novels, and Reflections on the Present State of Affairs at Home and Abroad in 1759. After his father's death in the same year, his mother placed him in charge of the family estate at Bradfield Hall; but the property was small and encumbered with debt. From 1763 to 1766 he devoted himself to farming on this property. In 1765 he married Martha Allen (died 1815), sister-in-law of Charles Burney. Their acute marital strife and Young's devotion to his children were witnessed by Frances Burney and her half-sister Sarah during a visit in 1792.
Young grieved long and deeply when his daughter Martha Ann died of consumption on 14 July 1797 at the age of fourteen, and the loss is said to have turned his mind to religion. In his final years he became firm friends with a granddaughter of Burney's, Marianne Francis (1790–1832), who shared his commitment to Evangelical Christianity.
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