| Main entry | Brown, Audrey Alexandra |
|---|
| Birth place | Nanaimo, British Columbia |
|---|
| Birth date | 29 October 1904 |
|---|
| Death place | Victoria, British Columbia |
|---|
| Death date | 20 September 1998 |
|---|
| Identifier | 0430 |
|---|
| Birth name | Audrey Alexandra Brown |
|---|
| Alternate names | Dan Sanders, "The Khoji" |
|---|
| Marital status | single |
|---|
| Religious affiliation | Anglican |
|---|
| Paid work | journalist |
|---|
| Biography | Audrey Alexandra Brown (1904-1998) was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, to an amateur historian and watchmaker, Joseph Miller Brown (1867-1942), and his wife, Rosa Elizabeth Rumming (1872-1960). The fifth child in a family of eight, Brown was first educated at St. Ann's Convent from April 1912 to September 1913 and at Nanaimo Public School from March 1915 to February 1917. A keen reader, she wrote her first verse at the age of six. At the age of twenty-three, she was struck by rheumatic fever; for most of the next decade, she was either bedridden or in a wheelchair, crippled by arthritic pains. She undertook treatment at the Queen Alexandra Solarium (Mill Bay) beginning in November 1934, where surgery restored her ability to walk. Although she published her first piece locally at the age of 16, her writing career took off in 1928, when she was "discovered" by Professor Pelham Edgar of Victoria College (University of Toronto), who was responsible for promoting her career from 1928 to 1939. Her first book of poetry, A DRYAD IN NANAIMO (1931), led to four more volumes of poetry as well as one prose work, THE LOG OF A LAME DUCK (1937). She also published her poetry and prose in various newspapers and journals. A freelance journalist from 1926 onwards, she often used the pseudonym "the Khoji" in the NANAIMO FREE PRESS. Prominent admirers of her work included former Prime Minister Robert Borden (with whom she corresponded from 1934 until his death in 1936) and Lorne Pierce. She received the first tangible reward for her work with the Members Memorial Medal of the Canadian Women's Press Club in 1936. This was followed by the Lorne Pierce Medal from the Royal Society of Canada (1944), the Order of Canada (1968), and the Centennial Silver Medal (1967). During her later years, she received support from the Canadian Writers' Foundation. She was involved with various organizations, including the Canadian Authors Association and visited England (from June to December of 1950) as a guest of PEN. Audrey Alexandra Brown died in Victoria in 1998. |
|---|
| Other notes | Audrey was possibly born in Duncan. |
|---|
| Honours and awards | Members Memorial Medal (Canadian Women's Press Club, 1936); Lorne Pierce Gold Medal (1944); Centennial Silver Medal (1967); Order of Canada (1968) |
|---|
| Residences | Nanaimo |
|---|
| Geographic regions | British Columbia |
|---|
| Primary genres | poetry; children's literature; life-writing |
|---|
| Books | A DRYAD IN NANAIMO (1931); THE TREE OF RESURRECTION AND OTHER POEMS (1937); THE LOG OF A LAME DUCK (1938); CHALLENGE TO TIME AND DEATH (1943); V-E DAY (1946); ALL FOOL'S DAY (1948) |
|---|
| Periodicals | CANADIAN FORUM; CANADIAN POETRY MAGAZINE; DALHOUSIE REVIEW; MONTREAL POETRY YEAR BOOK (1934); NANAIMO FREE PRESS; NANAIMO TIMES; SATURDAY NIGHT; VANCOUVER PROVINCE; VANCOUVER SUN; VICTORIA COLONIST; WINNIPEG FREE PRESS |
|---|
| Other publications | Anthologized in: Bennett, NEW HARVESTING (1938); Benson, MODERN CANADIAN POETS (1930); Brooker, YEARBOOK OF THE ARTS IN CANADA, 1936 (1936); Canadian Authors Association (Toronto), VOICES OF VICTORY (1941); Carman and Pierce, OUR CANADIAN LITERATURE (1934); Clarke, NEW TREASURY OF WAR POETRY (1943); Gustafson, ANTHOLOGY OF CANADIAN POETRY (1942); POEMS FOR THE INTERIM (1946); Roberts, FLYING COLOURS (1942); Robins, POCKETFUL OF CANADA (1946); Smith, BOOK OF CANADIAN POETRY (1943) |
|---|
| Organizations | Canadian Authors Association |
|---|
| Other arts | wrote Christmas carols |
|---|
| Father's name | Joseph Miller Brown |
|---|
| Life dates of father | 31 March 1867, Nanaimo, British Columbia - 24 December 1942, Nanaimo, British Columbia; m. 1893 |
|---|
| Father's note | pioneer watchmaker; amateur historian |
|---|
| Mother's name | Rosa Elizabeth Rumming |
|---|
| Life dates of mother | 29 August 1872, Kensington, England - 14 November 1960, Victoria, British Columbia; m. 1893 |
|---|
| Biographical references | Dagg, THE FEMININE GAZE (2001), p. 48; 1911 Census of Canada |
|---|
| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 26, 470, 605 |
|---|
| Research references | complete |
|---|
| Archival references | poems and correspondence, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives; correspondence and manuscripts, Pelham Edgar Collection, Victoria University, Toronto; miscellaneous, Audrey Brown Fonds, University of British Columbia Library; correspondence, Annie Charlotte Dalton Fonds, University of British Columbia; correspondence and manuscripts, Audrey Alexandra Brown fonds, University of Victoria Special Collections; correspondence, MacMillan Fonds, McMaster University; correspondence, D.C. Scott Papers, National Archives of Canada. |
|---|
| Image credits | Image courtesy of Barbara Ellison, executor of Audrey Alexandra Brown's fonds; held at the University of Victoria Archives, Victoria, BC. |
|---|
| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
|---|