Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Canterbury Provincial District]

Professor John Macmillan Brown

Professor John Macmillan Brown, M.A., who was for twenty years actively engaged on the professorial staff of Canterbury College, was born in 1846, was educated at Irvine Academy and at the University of Glasgow, where he took first class honours in mental philosophy, and gained the Lord Rector's prize as the author of a remarkable essay. Subsequently, he gained two additional Rector's prizes, and in 1870 the Suell Exhibition of £120 a year for five years. He distinguished himself by his ability and attainments at Balliol College, Oxford, his final success being interfered with by a temporary failure of health, during his last year. In 1874 Mr. Brown was appointed to Canterbury College as lecturer in classics and English, and began his work in May of the following year. Five years later the numbers attending his lectures had become so large that the Board of Governors offered him an assistant, but preferring to divide the subjects of his chair, Mr. Brown gave up classics, and added English history to English literature, in which he lectured with distinguished ability for the succeeding sixteen yrars. The number of students attending his English lectures increased from less than a score to between 100 and 200, and the lecture-room being far too small, repetitions of his lectures were necessary. A new and highly practical method of treating English composition elaborated by him, hardly ever failed with backward students. Professor Brown's lectures became so popular that many of the students supplied notes taken by them to their fellow-students In various parts of New Zealand, and others supplemented their incomes to a considerable page 165 extent by the sale of the notes of his lectures. Several volumes of one series of Professor Brown's lectures were pubished by Whitecmle and Temls; they included Shakespeare's “Julius Cæsar” and “Merchant of Venice,” and Thackeray's “Esmond” He is the author of a Manual of English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which was published in 1894. Owing to a complete breakdown in his health in 1895, he retired from his beloved work. Professor Brown was a member of the Royal Commission, appointed in 1879 to investigate the state of higher education in New Zealand. He has been a member of the University Senate since 1879, when he was appointed a Fellow; was examiner of teachers in English and history for the Government Education Department for a number of years, and has assisted in the conduct of annual examinations of several of the secondary schools of the Colony. He has acted as examiner in matriculation and junior scholarships examinations for the University, and it may be said that the remarkable growth of Canterbury College has been due in no small measure to the ability and painstaking enthusiasm of Professor Brown. In 1886 he was married to Miss Helen Connon, M. A., and has two daughters. Mrs. Brown was the first lady graduate to take the M.A. degree in New Zealand, and the first to do so in the British Dominions. She has been well known in educational circles in Christchurch as lady principal of the Girls' High School, and occupied that position for twelve years.
Standish and Preece, photo.Professor J. M. Brown.

Standish and Preece, photo.
Professor J. M. Brown.