Thomas Edward Brown

• Pen Name — T. E. Brown

• Birth Name — Thomas Edward Brown

• Born — 1830 5 5

• Birthplace — Douglas, Isle of Man

• Died — 1897 10 29

• Place of death — Bristol, England

• Resting Place — Redland Green, Bristol

• Occupation — Poet, scholar, theologian

• Education — Christ Church, Oxford

• Period — Late-Victorian

Thomas Edward Brown (5 May 183029 October 1897), commonly referred to 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.

• Illustration — Bronze statue of the Manx poet T. E. Brown at the top of Prospect Hill in Douglas, Isle of Man.

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.

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. 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. 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."

Quiller-Couch continues:

Hence, Brown created a distinct regional poetic form that earned him the appellation of "Manx national poet".

• 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". 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!"

• 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

• Poems of T. E. Brown, 1922, a compilation of many of Brown's most important poetic works.