Brown, Edward Killoran

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English/Literary Criticism

(1905-1951)

Although a major portion of his career was spent outside Canada, E.K. Brown was considered to be the country's most important literary critic during the first half of the twentieth century, and one of the scholars most responsible for the identification and articulation - and fostering - of an authentic Canadian literary tradition. Brown was born in Toronto, and completed his first degree at the University of Toronto in 1926. After a period of scholarly exploration in England, he finally chose the University of Paris for his doctoral study, completing a Docteur-ès-Lettres there in 1935, focusing his study on the work of Edith Wharton and Matthew Arnold. Brown had begun teaching in the Department of English at the University of Toronto in 1929, and continued in that institution until 1941, with the exception of a two-year period (1935-1937) when he served as Head of the Department of English at the University of Manitoba. Brown moved in 1941 to Cornell University as Head of that institution's Department of English until 1944. At that time, he moved to his final appointment as Professor of English at the University of Chicago, where he was teaching at his early death in 1951.


In recognition of his career-long contribution to Canadian literature, Brow was posthumously accorded the Lorne Piece Medal by the Royal Society of Canada. In addition to his rich legacy of scholarly publications - perhaps most significantly On Canadian Poetry (1943), which was accorded the Governor-General's Award in 1944 -   Brown played a significant role in a number of the enterprizes that were struggling to understand and to foster the Canadian literary tradition. During his time at his home University, Brown acted as a co-editor of both the Canadian Forum (1930-1933) and the ''University of Toronto Quarterly (1932-1941), in the latter of which his most notable contribution was perhaps the annual 'Letters in Canada' reviews.

Groening, Laura Smyth. E.K. Brown. A Study in Conflict. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993


http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/7497/E-K-Brown.html
http://utarms.library.utoronto.ca/researchers/fond-listings/edward-killoran-brown