Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Brown, George Douglas
BROWN, GEORGE DOUGLAS (1869–1902), novelist, born at Ochiltree, in Ayrshire, on 26 Jan. 1869, was son of George Douglas Brown (d. 1897), farmer, of Muirsmudden, in Ochiltree parish, by Sarah Gemmell (d. 1895), of Irish parentage. Brown at first went to the schools in his native village and the parish of Colyton, and when his family moved to Crofthead near Ayr in 1883 he attended the academy at Ayr. In 1887 he matriculated at the university of Glasgow, and in 1890 graduated M.A. with first-class honours. He won at the same time the Eglinton fellowship, but relinquished it the following year on carrying off the Snell exhibition, with which in the autumn of 1891 he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. There, though he never enjoyed good health or perfect ease, he took a first class in classical moderations in 1893. Absence in Scotland in solicitous attendance on his mother's deathbed accounts for his only obtaining a third class in the final classical school in 1895. On leaving Oxford in 1895 Brown settled in London, where he earned a living by his pen and by private tuition. In July 1896 he contributed a centenary paper on Burns to 'Blackwood's.' He wrote a boy's book, 'Love and a Sword' (1899), under the pseudonym of Kennedy King. He 'read' for the publishing firm of John Macqueen, and reviewed books and wrote fiction anonymously or pseudonymously for the 'Speaker,' 'Chapman's Magazine,' and other periodicals.
In the autumn of 1900 he rented for a few months a cottage at Hindhead, and there he wrote, after long deliberation, the novel 'The House with the Green Shutters.' Published in the autumn of 1901 under the pseudonym of George Douglas, the book achieved at home and in the United States a popular success, and was recognised by good critics to be a notable piece of fiction. A well-constructed story, it vigorously fused a rich store of vivid and first-hand impressions, some of them already embodied in earlier studies which Brown had not troubled to get printed. Brown avowed impatience with the complacent temper of contemporary Scottish novelists, and painted Scottish character in sombre colours.
Brown next planned further works, including an historical romance of the Cromwellian period, and a metaphysical study of 'Hamlet,' of which fragments remain. But nothing had been completed when he died unexpectedly while on a visit to a friend, Mr. Andrew Melrose, at Muswell Hill, on 28 Aug. 1902. He was buried in his mother's grave in the cemetery at Ayr. Mr. William Strang, A.R.A., etched a portrait.
[Cuthbert Lennox's memoir, with introduction by Mr. Andrew Lang and an appreciation by Mr. Andrew Melrose, 1902; private information.]