Biography
He was born in 1797 to Nicholas Brown, Jr., the namesake patron of Brown University. Collecting American books in the mid-19th century, John Carter Brown amassed thousands of early American volumes. He was the first American to join the Hakluyt Society as a charter member in 1846. He fathered a son at age 64, John Nicholas Brown I (1861–1900) continued his father's collection and in his testament assigned funds for the library building. John Carter Brown died in 1874.
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Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
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