“A Song in Sixpence and a Pocketful of Wheat” — two of the first lines of a famous English song, as well as the titles of no less well-known two works by Archibald Cronin, created in the best traditions of “bildungsromans” by Dickens, Balzac, and Flaubert. A story about the fate of a young man from Scotland—dreamy, ambitious, and naive—reflects many autobiographical facts from the author’s life. Cronin tells of his adventures, victories and defeats, losses and gains, love affairs and disappointments with warm humor and with the compassionate, emotionally engaging realism that characterizes his unique writing style. Here the reader will meet the same vivid narrative gift that made other of the author’s novels modern classics, such as “Brodie’s Castle,” “The Stars Look Down,” “The Citadel,” and many others. “A Song in Sixpence” is the first novel of the famous Cronin’s duology.