Thomas Edward Brown Explained

Pseudonym:	T. E. Brown
Birth Name:	Thomas Edward Brown
Birth Date:	1830 5, df=y
Birth Place:	Douglas, Isle of Man
Death Place:	Bristol, England
Resting Place:	Redland Green, Bristol
Occupation:	Poet, scholar, theologian
Nationality:	Manx
Education:	Christ Church, Oxford
Period:	Late-Victorian
Genres:	-->
Subjects:	-->

Thomas Edward Brown (5 May 183029 October 1897), referred to commonly as T. E. Brown, was a late-19th century scholar, schoolmaster, poet, and theologian from the Isle of Man.

Having achieved a double first at Christ Church, Oxford, and election as a fellow of Oriel in April 1854, Brown served first as headmaster of The Crypt School, Gloucester, then as a young master at the recently-founded Clifton College, near Bristol (influencing, among others, poet William Ernest Henley at The Crypt School. Writing throughout his teaching career, Brown developed a poetry corpus—with Fo'c's'le Yarns (1881), The Doctor (1887), The Manx Witch (1889), and Old John (1893)—of narrative poetry in Anglo-Manx, the historic dialect of English spoken on the Isle of Man that incorporates elements of Manx Gaelic. Retiring in 1892 to concentrate on writing, Brown died in 1897 (age 67), during a visit to Clifton.

Life

Brown was born on 5 May 1830 in Douglas, Isle of Man, the sixth of ten children born to Reverend Robert Brown and his wife, Dorothy. His elder brother became the Baptist preacher, pastor and reformer Hugh Stowell Brown (10 August 182324 February 1886). The family relocated to Kirk Braddan when Thomas was two years old.^[1]

Brown's father is described as a rather "stern, undemonstrative, evangelical preacher". As Rev. Brown became blind partially, he employed his sons in reading to him from a wide variety of works, excepting novels. Brown educated the boy, assisted by the parish schoolmaster.^[1] Young Brown was a shy and timid boy; the family gardener instilled in him a love of nature, and introduced him to Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. At the age of fifteen, Thomas began attending King William's College in Castletown, Isle of Man. It was at this time that he began to write poetry.

Arthur Quiller-Couch writes:

Brown left the Isle soon afterward, c. 1857, to accept the job of headmaster of The Crypt School, in Gloucester, where a commission had, through the hiring and other efforts, been attempting to revive the school.^[2] Brown was considered distinguished academically; while his tenure at the school was relatively brief (c. 1857–1863)—he reportedly found the burden of administration at the school intolerable—he had great influence during this period, including on William Ernest Henley with whom he overlapped from 1861 to 1863. Years later, after becoming a successful published poet (e.g., of Invictus and other works), Henley would recall Headmaster Brown as a "revelation" and "a man of genius ... the first I'd ever seen", and would eulogise him as one "singularly kind … at a moment … I needed kindness even more than I needed encouragement."^{[2] [3]}

Quiller-Couch continues:

Hence, Brown created a distinct regional poetic form that earned him the appellation of "Manx national poet".^{[4] [5]}

Works

Poetry

• Fo'c's'le Yarns. Including the poem "Betsy Lee", First Edition, Macmillan, 1881. New Edition, Macmillan, 1889.
• The Doctor, and Other Poems, 1887, contains the title poem, as well as "Kitty of the Sherragh Vane" and "The Schoolmasters".^[6] The title poem is the source of the humorous doublet "Money is honey—my little sonny! / And a rich man's joke is allis funny!"^[6]
• The Manx Witch, and other poems, Macmillan & Co., 1889.
• Old John: And Other Poems, 1893. Including the poem "Indwelling" – "If thou couldst empty all thyself of self, Like to a shell dishabited, Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf, And say—" This is not dead,"—..."
• The Collected Poems of T. E. Brown, Macmillan & Co., 1900. Edited in two volumes by an old friend, Mr S. T. Irwin ^[7]
• Poems of T. E. Brown, 1922, a compilation of many of Brown's most important poetic works.^[8]

Further reading

• Anon., 2015, "T E Brown – The Manx National Poet," at Medium (online), see https://medium.com/uk-heritage-holiday-island/t-e-brown-772478f57bc9, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Neil Hultgren, 2014, Melodramatic Imperial Writing: From the Sepoy Rebellion to Cecil Rhodes, Athens, OH:Ohio University Press, pp. 5–7, 16, 24, and 93–127 passim, and corresponding notes, pp. 213–259 passim,, see https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0821444832, accessed 12 May 2015.
• MNHL, 2007, "The Manx National Poet: Thomas Edward Brown," at Manx National Heritage Library [''Eiraght Ashoonagh Vannin''], Public Information Sheet No.10, March 2007 [RS: 03.07], see https://web.archive.org/web/20140707124947/http://www.manxnationalheritage.im/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/info-sheet-TE-Brown.pdf, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Joanne Shattock, 1999, "Thomas Edward Brown 1830–97," in The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: 1800–1900, pp. 543f, 1989, Cambridge, U.K.:CUP, (Volume 4 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature,), see https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0521391008, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Max Keith Sutto, 1991, The Drama of Storytelling in T.E. Brown's Manx Yarns, Newark, DE:University of Delaware Press,, see https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0874134099, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Frederick Wilse Bateson, Ed., 1966 [1940], "Thomas Edward Brown (1830–1897)," in The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Volume 2, p. 282, Cambridge, U.K.:CUP, see https://books.google.com/books?id=Uak8AAAAIAAJ, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Arthur Quiller-Couch, Ed., 2015 [1930], "Thomas Edward Brown, Volumes 1830–1930," Cambridge, U.K.:Cambridge University Press,, see https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1107458765, accessed 9 May 2015. [Quote: "Originally published in 1930, this book contains recollections from the friends of the Manx poet and theologian Thomas Edward Brown on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. The volume includes a preface from the then Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, Sir Claude Hill, as well as some unpublished letters written by Browne and a brief biography written by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch."]
• Brown, Theron & Hezekiah Butterworth, 1906, "Thomas E. Brown, 'Three Kings from out of the Orient'," in The Story of the Hymns and Tunes, New York, NY:American Tract Society, pp. 1555, 1616, see https://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/r/o/w/brown_te.htm and https://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/h/r/3kingsfo.htm, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Brown, T. E. & Irwin, Sidney Thomas, (Ed.), 1900, "Letters of Thomas Edward Brown, author of 'Fo'c'sle yarns,'" Vol. 1, Westminster:A. Constable and Co., see https://archive.org/details/lettersofthomase01brow, accessed 9 May 2015.
• Derek Winterbottom, T. E. Brown: his life and legacy (The Manx Experience, Douglas, 1997)

External links

• Collected Poems of T. E. Brown, online

Notes and References

1. https://books.google.com/books?id=4Ns-AAAAIAAJ&q=Thomas+Edward+Brown Simpson, Selwyn George. Thomas Edward Brown, the Manx Poet: An Appreciation, London, U.K.: Walter Scott Publishing, 1906, p. 6
2. John Connell, 1949, W. E. Henley, London: Constable, page numbers as indicated inline.
3. This quote is from an admiring obituary of Brown that Henley wrote for the December 1897 issue of the New Review, see Connell, op. cit.
4. MNHL, 2007, "The Manx National Poet: Thomas Edward Brown", at Manx National Heritage Library [''Eiraght Ashoonagh Vannin''], Public Information Sheet No.10, March 2007 [RS: 03.07], see Web site: Archived copy . 2015-05-10 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140707124947/http://www.manxnationalheritage.im/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/info-sheet-TE-Brown.pdf . 7 July 2014 ., accessed 9 May 2015.
5. Anon., 2015, "T E Brown – The Manx National Poet", at Medium (online), see https://medium.com/uk-heritage-holiday-island/t-e-brown-772478f57bc9, accessed 9 May 2015.
6. T. E. Brown, 1887, The Doctor, and Other Poems, London, England:Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1887, see http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwiln9;view=1up;seq=7, accessed 10 May 2015, page numbers as indicated inline.
7. Brown, Thomas Edward. 4. 662–663. Arthur Thomas. Quiller-Couch. Arthur Quiller-Couch.
8. T. E. Brown, 1922, Poems of T. E. Brown, London, England: MacMillan, page numbers as indicated inline.