Thomas Edward Brown Letter

Collection — Box: VMF 2, Folder: 03

Identifier: MS-VMF-vmf017

Staff Only

Autograph letter signed from [Hartley] to [Ira] relating to the sources and condition of Betsy Lee: A Fo̓c̓s̓le Yarn by Thomas Edward Brown. Undated, 1 page.

Dates

Creation: undated

Creator

Brown, T. E. (Thomas Edward), 1830-1897 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Open

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Extent

1.00 items

1 folders

Additional Description

Biographical or Historical Information

Thomas Edward Brown (5 May 1830 – 29 October 1897), commonly referred to as T.E. Brown, was a Manx poet, scholar and theologian.

Brown was born at Douglas, Isle of Man. He attended King William's College and Christ Church, Oxford. He returned to the Isle of Man as vice-principal of his old school. He had been ordained deacon, but did not proceed to priest's orders for many years.

In 1857, he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, and soon afterwards left the island once more to become headmaster of the Crypt School, Gloucester then Clifton College where he remained from September 1863 to July 1892, when he retired.

His poem "Betsy Lee" appeared in Macmillan's Magazine (April and May 1873), and was published separately in the same year. It was included in Fo'c's'le Yarns (1881), which reached a second edition in 1889. This volume included at least three other notable poems--"Tommy Big-eyes," "Christmas Rose," and "Captain Tom and Captain Hugh." It was followed by The Doctor and other Poems (1887), The Manx Witch and other Poems (1889), and Old John and other Poems--a volume mainly lyrical (1893). Brown's more important poems are narrative, and written in the Anglo-Manx dialect, with a free use of pauses, and sometimes with daring irregularity of rhythm.