E. K. Brown (Edward Killoran Brown) Biography

Canadian critic, born in Toronto, educated at the universities of Toronto and Paris; he subsequently taught in Toronto and at Cornell and Chicago Universities. Brown wrote on a wide range of subjects and authors, including Matthew Arnold and Willa Cather, but his most important critical and editorial work was concerned with Canadian literature at a time when the subject was still in its infancy. His best-known book, On Canadian Poetry (1943), which incorporates some of his earlier influential essays, attempted to chart the struggle of the Canadian poet against what Brown saw as an essentially philistine society, and to identify the distinctive qualities of the Canadian literary tradition. He also wrote studies of the work of two of the ‘Confederation Poets’, Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott, whom he regarded as particularly important in the evolution of Canadian poetry.