The House with the Green Shutters by George Brown

The House with the Green Shutters by George Brown

George Douglas Brown (1869-1902) was a Scottish novelist. He studied Classics at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating he travelled to London and worked as a journalist - contributing articles and stories to Blackwood's Magazine - and a part-time editor and reader for publishing houses. In 1899 he published Love and a Sword under the pseudonym Kennedy King, the same pseudonym he used for his articles, and the next year Famous Fighting Regiments published under the pseudonym George Hood. He then started work at Haslemere on The House with the Green Shutters, which was published in 1901 under the pseudonym George Douglas. The book was a success, and he planned a second novel to be called The Incompatibles, but shortly afterwards he contracted pneumonia and died at the home of his friend Andrew Melrose. The House with the Green Shutters gives a strongly outlined picture of the harder and less genial aspects of Scottish life and character, and was regarded as a useful corrective to the more roseate presentations of the kailyard school of J. M. Barrie and Ian Maclaren.

George Douglas Brown was born in the little community of Ochiltree, near Mauchline, Ayrshire, in the year 1869. He was raised by his mother and schooled at the village primary school as the illegitimate son of a local farmer and the unlettered daughter of an Irish laborer. When he moved on to secondary school, the rector of Ayr Academy assisted him in obtaining a bursary to the University of Glasgow, where he received a first-class honors degree in 1891 and the Snell Exhibition Scholarship to Balliol. He was an active member of Oxford student life, although his Classical studies were disrupted by spells of illness and melancholy. Brown returned to Ochiltree in 1895 to care for his dying mother, graduating with a third-class degree later that year and planning to work as a freelance journalist in London. He published an essay on Burns for Blackwoods Magazine and glossed the Scots vocabulary in reprints of John Galt's novels.

Using the pen name 'Kennedy King,' he wrote a number of articles as well as an adventure novel called Love and Sword (1899). In 1900, he wrote a long story about a character named Gourlay in a village called Barbie, wanting to create something more meaningful about his own life experiences and the Scottish character. He retreated to a cottage in Haslemere, encouraged by his friends, and began to build the story into a novel. Using the pen name 'George Douglas,' The Home With The Green Shutters was published in 1901.

The work received a lot of positive feedback, including comparisons to Balzac, Flaubert, Stevenson, and Galt, as well as Greek tragedy. Brown was ecstatic with his success, and he set about planning a study titled The Novelist, jotting down his subcritical views for inclusion in 'Rules of Writing.' Another novel, The Incompatibles, was planned, but a bout of pneumonia deteriorated his already compromised health, and he died at the age of 33 in 1902.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780140432183
ISBN 10	0140432183
Title	The House with the Green Shutters
Author	George Brown
Series	Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	1985-10-31
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.