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Browne's Bookstore, Chicago (1907 - S.141)
 

Francis Fisher Browne

     

It might well be said that Francis Fisher Browne was as much a "formative influence in American literature" (BD p240) as Frank Lloyd Wright was in the field of architecture.
      Francis Fisher Browne was born on December 1, 1843 in South Halifax, Vermont. His father, William Goldsmith Browne was a well-known editor, poet and printer in Massachusetts. Francis worked in his father's print shop in Chicopee until the summer of 1862 when he served in the Massachusetts regiment. From 1866-67 he studied law in Rochester, New York and at the University of Michigan. But, like his father, his heart was drawn to the written word. After a year in Michigan, he moved with his wife Susan Seaman Brooks to Chicago where he became the editor of "The Lakeside Monthly" in 1869. Within two years he bought an interest in the magazine, and once gaining control, changed the name to "The Western Monthly". It became one the best monthlies in the country. He formed the Chicago Literary Club in 1874. The nation experience the financial panic of 1873, and Browne's health suffered greatly, forcing him to give up the magazine in 1874. In a letter (LitClub p2) to Frederick Gookin, June 3, 1892, concerning the early days of the Literary Club, Browne recalled "I was not present at this meeting owing to serious illness, - from which cause also the magazine was, not long after, given up; and for the next few years I was absent from the city most of the time, and my membership in the club lapsed." Because of the seriousness of his health, he was forced to leave Chicago. Unable to attend his beloved Literary Club, and unable to pay the dues, he was expelled from the club (Prophet p13). It was not until 1899 that he once again became an honorary member.
      The New York Times reported on May 1, 1878 that "There was somewhat of a falling off in the bankruptcy petitions today, only 18 being filed. Among the Chicago petitioners were... Francis F. Browne, $15,000, unsecured." There are no biographies that include this detail about his life, which is understandable. But in the 1913 preface of "The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln", alludes to his financial struggles. "But along with this increasing prestige (The Lakeside Monthly) came a series of extraneous setbacks and calamities, culminating in a complete breakdown of its editor and owner, which made the magazine's suspension imperative" (p.v-vii). This, along with his health issue could explain his lack of dominance in the literary field during the later part of the 1870s. For the next few years he supported his family by writing articles and reviews for a number of national publications. From 1878 to 1879 he became the literary editor for "The Alliance".
      Gaining his strength, and partnering with Jansen, McClurge & Co., he founded "The Dial" in 1880. Under Browne's leadership as founder and editor of the "The Dial", it became the premier literary magazine in the nation. In 1892 full ownership was transferred to Browne.
      Besides his editing responsibilities he wrote and edited a number of books. "Golden Poems by British and American

 

Authors", 1881. "The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose", 1883. "Bugle Echoes, a collection of Poems of the Civil War, Northern and Southern", 1886. "The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln", 1886. The seven volume "Laurel Crowned Verse", 1891-92. "Volunteer Grain", 1895. "Paul and Virginia of a Northern Zone" 1895.
      He was also Chairman of the Committee of the Congress of Authors at the World's Congress Auxiliary at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. He was an honorary member of the Caxton Club in Chicago and the Twilight club in Pasadena, California.
      "He to whom Chicago owes, perhaps more than any other one man, such growth of literary taste as the city may boast is Mr. Francis F. Browne..." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, November 1892.
      Frederick Cook, in "Bygone days in Chicago" 1910, described the "present Dial - a critical force surpassed, perhaps, by none in America... is receiving an even larger recognition as a formative influence in American literature."
      John Burroughs wrote, "His memory is a precious possession to us all. Such men belong to the 'saving remnant' of which Arnold wrote so eloquently; they help save us from the vulgar and the unworthy... I have lost a dear friend, and every person who cherishes a high and worthy ideal has lost a friend also." The Dial, June 1, 1913.
      "One need not be a student of human nature to read in this face the essential characteristics of the man - the kindliness and sincerity and fearlessness, the mingled strains of gentleness and strength, of idealism and practicality, of frankness and reserve, of tolerance and pride... Simplicity, sincerity, courage, persistency – these were the predominant notes in his character." The American Review of Reviews, July 1913.
     
Francis Fisher Browne past away on May 11, 1913 at the Miradero Sanatorium, near Santa Barbara, and was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum near Pasadena in Altadena, California. "Overwork Causes Passing Of Chicago Editor. ...Brown, who for twenty years has been one of the more prominent of Pasadena's winter residents... Attending physicians say Browne's illness was brought on by overwork. He was too weak physically to recovery. He went to Santa Barbara the first of the year and since then devoted his entire time and energy to a revision of "Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln," a book which came off the press in 1886, and which is now out of print. Irving Way of the publishing firm of Way & Williams, Chicago, now a resident of Los Angeles was a friend of Browne, and it was his company which published several of the author's books. Browne had a wide acquaintance in the world of letters, and was on terms of intimate friendship with John Muir, John Burroughs, Joaquin Miller, Walt Whitman, Whittler, Lowell, Holmes and other men of note." The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1913.

 
1: Francis Fisher Browne, Circa 1865-1869. In 1866 (age 23) he studied law at the university of Michigan. After a year in Michigan, he moved to Chicago where he became the editor of "The Western Monthly" and "The Lakeside Monthly" until 1874. Published in "Bygone days in Chicago; recollections of the 'Garden City' of the sixties", By Frederick Francis Cook, 1910. Cook described the "present Dial - a critical force surpassed, perhaps, by none in America... is receiving an even larger recognition as a formative influence in American literature (p240)." Photograph courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois.
 
2: Francis Fisher Browne, published in 1892. "He to whom Chicago owes, perhaps more than any other one man, such growth of literary taste as the city may boast is Mr. Francis F. Browne... looks what his reputation is, that of the leader in many respects of the local coterie of critics and of thinkers. He tilled the field early here and well, though under disadvantages." (p.518). Courtesy of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, November 1892.
 
3: Francis Fisher Browne, published in 1900. "Mr. Browne... giving the literary public, through the medium of the Dial, such critical comment and literary guidance as it is not easy to chance upon elsewhere. Wide information, ripe judgment, taste, and an Arnoldian seriousness and probity -- these characterize the contents of the Dial steadily from one issue to another, unvarying as the hand at the helm. Mr. Browne, while fully abreast of his time, is of the good old school of self respecting men of letters who stand firm on a few first principles" (p.308). Courtesy of The Book Buyer, A Review and Record of Current Literature, May, 1900. Portrait by John Vance Cheney.
 
4: Francis Fisher Browne, published in 1905. "Francis Fisher Browne -- Literary Editor. There is one literary publication in the United States not controlled by a publishing house, The Dial of Chicago. Mr. Browne was its founder and is still its editor. He had previously, in 1869, founded the Lakeside Monthly, a magazine which was too fatally good for its constituency. Mr. Browne has made The dial one of the permanent literary influences of the country" (p.1252). Courtesy of The World To-Day, December, 1905.
 
5a: Francis Fisher Browne March 1909, in Southern California. Front Row (L to R): John Burroughs, Fay H. Sellers, John Muir, A. H. Sellers? Back Row (L to R): Theodore Roosevelt, unidentified, unidentified, unidentified, Francis Fisher Browne, unidentified. Courtesy of the University of the Pacific, California.
 
5b: Detail Francis Fisher Browne March 1909, in Southern California. Front Row (L to R): John Muir, A. H. Sellers? Back Row (L to R): Unidentified, Francis Fisher Browne, unidentified.
 
6a: Francis Fisher Browne, Summer 1909, on the trail to Nevada Falls in Yosemite. (L to R) two on left unidentified, Francis Fisher Browne, John Muir and John Burroughs. In a letter dated June 10, 1910, John Muir writes, "My dear Mr. Browne... Are you coming west this year? It would be delightful to see you once more. I often think of the misery of Mr. Burroughs and his physician caused by our revels in Burns' poems, reciting verse about in the resonant board chamber whose walls transmitted every one of the blessed words to the sleepy and unwilling ears of John, much to the distress of Miss Barus. Fun to us, but death and broken slumbers to Oom John. With all best wishes, my dear Browne, and many warmly cherished memories, I am. Ever faithfully your friend, (signed) John Muir"  (Link to letter)  Photograph courtesy of University of the Pacific Library, CA.  Letter courtesy of the Middlebury College Abernathy Library.
 
6b: Detail of Francis Fisher Browne (left) and John Muir (right).
 
7a: Francis Fisher Browne, 1909. (L to R) Charles Keeler, John Muir, William Keith (standing), John Burroughs (seated), and Francis Fisher Browne. Courtesy of the University of the Pacific, CA. John Burroughs wrote, "His memory is a precious possession to us all. Such men belong to the 'saving remnant' of which Arnold wrote so eloquently; they help save us from the vulgar and the unworthy... I have lost a dear friend, and every person who cherishes a high and worthy ideal has lost a friend also" (p.441). The Dial, June 1, 1913.
 
7a: Detail Francis Fisher Browne, 1909.
 
8: Francis Fisher Browne, 1910. Published in "The Dial in Transition", Nicholas Joost, 1966. "...For thirty-three years Francis Browne edited and published his review as a fortnightly and by his high standards and unremitting effort made it the leading critical review in the Midwest, a journal serious enough to attract the talents of Professor Woodrow Wilson and Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller. As an outpost of the New England tradition in its more liberal and literary aspects, The Dial prospered. This is to say that its years of stability and prosperity entirely coincided with the ownership of Francis F. Browne." Caption: "Francis F. Browne, founder of The Dial, as he appeared in 1910." Courtesy of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Autumn, 1966.
 
9: Francis Fisher Browne, Circa 1910-1913. Published in the 1913 edition of "The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln". "It was a far heavier task than he had anticipated, but he gave it practically his undivided attention until within three or four weeks of his death. Only when the last pages of manuscripts had been dispatched to the printer did he yield to the overwhelming physical suffering that had been upon him for a long time past." (p.v-vii)
 
10: Francis Fisher Browne, Circa 1912-1913. "In referring to one of his most recent portraits: One need not be a student of human nature to read in this face the essential characteristics of the man - the kindliness and sincerity and fearlessness, the mingled strains of gentleness and strength, of idealism and practicality, of frankness and reserve, of tolerance and pride... Simplicity, sincerity, courage, persistency – these were the predominant notes in his character." Courtesy of the The American Review of Reviews, July 1913.
 
11: Francis Fisher Browne past away on May 11, 1913 at the Miradero Sanatorium, near Santa Barbara, and was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum near Pasadena in Altadena, California. "Overwork Causes Passing Of Chicago Editor. ...Brown, who for twenty years has been one of the more prominent of Pasadena's winter residents... Attending physicians say Browne's illness was brought on by overwork. He was too weak physically to recovery. He went to Santa Barbara the first of the year and since then devoted his entire time and energy to a revision of "Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln," a book which came off the press in 1886, and which is now out of print. Irving Way of the publishing firm of Way & Williams, Chicago, now a resident of Los Angeles was a friend of Browne, and it was his company which published several of the author's books. Browne had a wide acquaintance in the world of letters, and was on terms of intimate friendship with John Muir, John Burroughs, Joaquin Miller, Walt Whitman, Whittler, Lowell, Holmes and other men of note." The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1913.
 
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Additional Wright Studies
 
Adelman (S.344)    Banff National Park Pavilion (S.170)    Bitter Root Inn (S.145)    Blair Residence (S.351)    Blumberg Residence (Project) 
 
Boomer Residence (1953 - S.361)    Brandes Residence (S.350)    Browne's Bookstore (S.141)    Como Orchard Summer Colony (S.144)  
 
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Frank Lloyd Wright's First Published Article (1898)
 
Photographic Chronology of Frank Lloyd Wright Portraits
 
"Frank Lloyd Wright's Nakoma Clubhouse & Sculptures." A comprehensive study of Wright’s Nakoma Clubhouse and the Nakoma and Nakomis Sculptures. Now Available. Limited Edition. More information.
 
 
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