George Douglas Brown

1869 - 1902

Author. Born in Ochiltree (East Ayrshire), Brown was the illegitimate son of a farm girl. Poverty threatened to limit his education, but he was persuaded to proceed to Ayr Academy and went on to complete his education at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, winning a scholarship to Balliol College in 1891. His degree suffered as he was forced to nurse his dying mother, but he graduated in 1895. Moving to London to become a journalist, he published his first book Love and Sword in 1899.

He is better known for The House with the Green Shutters (1901), which is regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century Scottish literature. Suffering from stress, Brown died in London from pneumonia, aged only 33, leaving two further novels unfinished.

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