Born in Alberta, Louisiana, a sawmill town, Brown grew up in Ouachita County, Arkansas, which experienced an oil boom when he was thirteen.In the middle of the Great Depression, he set out for George Washington University in Washington, D.C. for graduate study.
He married Sally Stroud
Brown's mother later relocated to Little Rock so he and his brother and
two sisters could attend a better high school.
In the middle of the Great Depression, he set out for George Washington University in Washington, D.C. for graduate study.
Brown worked part-time for J. Willard Marriott, took classes.Eventually he found a full-time position and became a librarian for the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1934 to 1942. Brown's first novel was a satire of New Deal bureaucracy, but it was not published due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.From 1948 to 1972, he was an agriculture librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he had gained a master's degree in library.
