Brown, Thomas Edward

(1830-1897)

   Born on the Isle of Man, the son of a vicar, educated on the island and at Christ Church, Oxford, he became a Fellow at Oriel College. He was a master at Clifton College, Bristol, for nearly thirty years and died there from a brain hemorrhage while giving an address to the boys. He was buried at Redland Green, Bristol. A portrait by Sir William Richmond is in the library at Clifton College and another is in the Newbolt Room. He was a prolific poet on a wide rang of topics, many of them in the Manx dialect and dealing with Manx life. The first of his tales in verse, "Betsy Lee," appeared in Macmillan's Magazine for April 1873. His poem "My Garden" is familiar with its opening line: "A Garden Is a Lovesome Thing, God wot!" Some of his other poems: "Between Our Folding Lips," "Braddan Vicarage," "Dartmoor: Sunset at Chagford," "I Bended Unto Me," "Roman Women," "The Bristol Channel," "The Voices of Nature," "Vespers," "Wesley in Heaven," "When Love Meets Love."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Life and Works of T.E. Brown (www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/people/writers/teb.htm). The Collected Poems of T.E. Brown, Macmillan & Co., Ltd (1909). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Poems and Places. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Faber & Faber, 1980. The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Christopher Ricks, ed. Oxford University Press, 2002. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Christopher Ricks, ed. Oxford University Press, 1999. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.