Francis Fisher Browne

December 1, 1843 (age 69)

Halifax, Windham County, Vermont, United States

In Chicago, Browne began working as a manager and part owner of a printing shop. By 1869, however, Browne sold his portion of the printing house to buy a piece of the Western Monthly, a magazine newly established by H. V. Reed and E. C. Tuttle in December 1868. The magazine ran at about sixty-five pages per issue, but Browne saw an opportunity to develop a new kind of magazine. In his first year at Western Monthly, he raised one hundred thousand dollars by issuing stock to wealthy Chicagoans. With this influx of capital, Browne began to improve the magazine’s physical and literary quality. By 1870, he issued a prospectus for Western Monthly that promised it would “spare no pains or expense to ensure the future excellence of their magazine,” a magazine which was intended to “properly represent the growing Literature of the great Mississippi valley.” By November 1870, two years after its inception, the magazine had increased to ninety-six pages per issue, at a subscription rate of four dollars per year. The magazine also became part of Lakeside Publishing and Printing Company, a major publishing concern in Chicago. It was Browne’s hope that he would not only build a reading market in the Midwest but would build a market for Western literature in the established literary markets of the east. Thus, the Western Monthly published a wide variety of articles, from poetry and fiction to nonfiction essays on “California Redwoods,” “Darwinism and Christianity,” “The United States’ North Pole Expedition,” and “Henry Ward Beecher and His Church.” Browne even serialized novels and reviewed any number of recent publications. However, the magazine was stuck in a regional market, with most of the contributors and subscribers coming from the Chicago area. In an effort to change that, Browne changed the title of the journal to The Lakeside Monthly, and soon the paper was being read in the East and even Europe. The journal’s growth was cut short by tragedy, however. First, two major fires wiped out the magazine’s headquarters (a catastrophe from which Browne remarkably rebounded) and then the panic of 1873, wiped out their subscribers’ funds. The ensuing depression deprived Browne of even more of his subscribers, and in 1874, the journal closed. Between 1874 and 1877, Browne kept afloat by writing editorials for sundry newspapers and publicity copy for the railroads. He was in ill health during this period, according to Roger Cameron Lips’s Dictionary of Literary Biography essay, and, more painfully, to have lost his sense of purpose. In 1875, his father sent him some money and advised him to try another career because “literary matters require the hardest work and afford the poorest pay of any kind of business.” But by 1877, Browne had rededicated himself to his literary goals, taking a post as literary and managing editor at the religious journal Chicago Alliance. From there, Browne became an editor at one of the largest publishers in Chicago, Jansen, McClurg & Co., where he became well-known among authors as a sharp businessman and a clever editor. With this base of connections and capital, Browne began his next Midwestern literary journal, the Dial. It was to become one of the most influential and important venues for literature in America. The Puritan streak in Browne kept him focused on maintaining high standards: the magazine’s look changed very little through the years, and its outlook changed less. The magazine was named for a past journal of the New England Transcendentalists. It was intended to cater to “the book-lover and the book-buyer,” those of “literary tastes and habits.” Moreover, it published only reviews of those books its editor deemed important, along with lists of recent book titles. The Dial, based in the publishing offices of Jansen, McClurg & Co., focused on fiction, poetry, and books about fiction and poetry writers, but it also carried some news of nonfiction writing, including American history, politics, philosophy, classics, religion, art, science, and gardening. Many of the journal’s contributors were associates from the publishing house, but Browne hand-picked a core of literary authorities for the journal as well. The principal writer and chief literary critic for the magazine was a Chicago school teacher, William Morton Payne, and other reviewers were similarly literate people who were not necessarily writers but who agreed with Browne’s taste in books. Browne used librarians and young scholars, as well as clergymen, real estate agents, housewives, soldiers, and assorted others. The magazine was a hit, and in 1892, Browne was able to separate the journal from the publishing house. The magazine also began to appear twice monthly and broadened its purview to include issues of an intellectual nature. With new autonomy and scope, the Dial was able to assume a leadership role in the chronicling and formation of American taste. Browne began in these years to publish editorials and short, general essays, discussing women’s education, or “Whittier and Slavery,” or any other topic that caught his attention. Still, the journal stuck to its owner’s steadfast dogma of literary standards: as Browne promised in his journal’s pages, he printed “objective and scientific criticism” based on ethical, aesthetic, and rhetorical principles. During his ascendancy in the literary world, Browne edited a number of books, as well as producing his own biography, The Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln: A Biography of the Great American President from an Entirely New Standpoint, with Fresh and Invaluable Material (1886). Browne’s own poems, published in Volunteer Grain (1895), were less enthusiastically received. Lips described the verses in the collection as “sentimental poems in conventional metrical verse, without originality of thought or imagery.” Though his poetry was not successful, as an editor Browne was unparalleled. He worked at the Dial and on related projects until his death on May 11, 1913, at the Miradero Sanitarium in Santa Barbara.

Francis Fisher Browne Edit Profile

editor writer author

Background

Browne was born in South Halifax, Vermont, on December 1, 1843. His parents, William Goldsmith Browne and Eunice Fisher Browne, both descended from Puritans. A streak of Puritanism ran through Francis Browne, too.

Browne’s father was a literary man, who taught in Vermont schools and edited two abolitionist papers, The Vermont Telegraph and The Voice of Freedom.

Education

In the 1850s, the family moved to western Massachusetts where Browne sporadically attended public school. His real education, however, came from helping his father with the editing of the Chicopee Journal. It was through this experience that Browne began to develop the skills of an editor, as well as a dream of bringing literary culture to all readers.

In 1862, Browne joined the 46th Massachusetts Regiment, a military outfit posted in North Carolina. He served there for one year before the regiment was disbanded, and then moved to Rochester, New York, to become a lawyer’s apprentice. He studied law at the University of Michigan in 1866 and 1867, but returned to Rochester - his studies incomplete - to work as a printer.

Career

In Chicago, Browne began working as a manager and part owner of a printing shop. By 1869, however, Browne sold his portion of the printing house to buy a piece of the Western Monthly, a magazine newly established by H. V. Reed and E. C. Tuttle in December 1868. The magazine ran at about sixty-five pages per issue, but Browne saw an opportunity to develop a new kind of magazine.

In his first year at Western Monthly, he raised one hundred thousand dollars by issuing stock to wealthy Chicagoans. With this influx of capital, Browne began to improve the magazine’s physical and literary quality. By 1870, he issued a prospectus for Western Monthly that promised it would “spare no pains or expense to ensure the future excellence of their magazine,” a magazine which was intended to “properly represent the growing Literature of the great Mississippi valley.” By November 1870, two years after its inception, the magazine had increased to ninety-six pages per issue, at a subscription rate of four dollars per year. The magazine also became part of Lakeside Publishing and Printing Company, a major publishing concern in Chicago.

It was Browne’s hope that he would not only build a reading market in the Midwest but would build a market for Western literature in the established literary markets of the east. Thus, the Western Monthly published a wide variety of articles, from poetry and fiction to nonfiction essays on “California Redwoods,” “Darwinism and Christianity,” “The United States’ North Pole Expedition,” and “Henry Ward Beecher and His Church.” Browne even serialized novels and reviewed any number of recent publications. However, the magazine was stuck in a regional market, with most of the contributors and subscribers coming from the Chicago area. In an effort to change that, Browne changed the title of the journal to The Lakeside Monthly, and soon the paper was being read in the East and even Europe. The journal’s growth was cut short by tragedy, however. First, two major fires wiped out the magazine’s headquarters (a catastrophe from which Browne remarkably rebounded) and then the panic of 1873, wiped out their subscribers’ funds. The ensuing depression deprived Browne of even more of his subscribers, and in 1874, the journal closed.

Between 1874 and 1877, Browne kept afloat by writing editorials for sundry newspapers and publicity copy for the railroads. He was in ill health during this period, according to Roger Cameron Lips’s Dictionary of Literary Biography essay, and, more painfully, to have lost his sense of purpose. In 1875, his father sent him some money and advised him to try another career because “literary matters require the hardest work and afford the poorest pay of any kind of business.” But by 1877, Browne had rededicated himself to his literary goals, taking a post as literary and managing editor at the religious journal Chicago Alliance. From there, Browne became an editor at one of the largest publishers in Chicago, Jansen, McClurg & Co., where he became well-known among authors as a sharp businessman and a clever editor. With this base of connections and capital, Browne began his next Midwestern literary journal, the Dial. It was to become one of the most influential and important venues for literature in America.

The Puritan streak in Browne kept him focused on maintaining high standards: the magazine’s look changed very little through the years, and its outlook changed less.

The magazine was named for a past journal of the New England Transcendentalists. It was intended to cater to “the book-lover and the book-buyer,” those of “literary tastes and habits.” Moreover, it published only reviews of those books its editor deemed important, along with lists of recent book titles. The Dial, based in the publishing offices of Jansen, McClurg & Co., focused on fiction, poetry, and books about fiction and poetry writers, but it also carried some news of nonfiction writing, including American history, politics, philosophy, classics, religion, art, science, and gardening. Many of the journal’s contributors were associates from the publishing house, but Browne hand-picked a core of literary authorities for the journal as well. The principal writer and chief literary critic for the magazine was a Chicago school teacher, William Morton Payne, and other reviewers were similarly literate people who were not necessarily writers but who agreed with Browne’s taste in books. Browne used librarians and young scholars, as well as clergymen, real estate agents, housewives, soldiers, and assorted others.

The magazine was a hit, and in 1892, Browne was able to separate the journal from the publishing house. The magazine also began to appear twice monthly and broadened its purview to include issues of an intellectual nature. With new autonomy and scope, the Dial was able to assume a leadership role in the chronicling and formation of American taste. Browne began in these years to publish editorials and short, general essays, discussing women’s education, or “Whittier and Slavery,” or any other topic that caught his attention. Still, the journal stuck to its owner’s steadfast dogma of literary standards: as Browne promised in his journal’s pages, he printed “objective and scientific criticism” based on ethical, aesthetic, and rhetorical principles.

During his ascendancy in the literary world, Browne edited a number of books, as well as producing his own biography, The Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln: A Biography of the Great American President from an Entirely New Standpoint, with Fresh and Invaluable Material (1886).

Browne’s own poems, published in Volunteer Grain (1895), were less enthusiastically received. Lips described the verses in the collection as “sentimental poems in conventional metrical verse, without originality of thought or imagery.” Though his poetry was not successful, as an editor Browne was unparalleled. He worked at the Dial and on related projects until his death on May 11, 1913, at the Miradero Sanitarium in Santa Barbara.

Achievements

Francis Fisher Browne is best known for his long tenure as editor and owner of the Dial, the first and finest literary journal of the Midwest. Browne’s creation of the Dial not only brought world literature to the West, but also established midland literature for an international audience.

Works

The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln

Bugle Echoes: A Collection of the Poetry of the Civil War Bugle Echoes: A Collection of the Poetry of the Civil War

The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose

book

Views

For Browne, English writing was superior to American, and poetry was superior to prose.

Browne was not so much interested in finding new literature as in showing that the new voices in the West could enter the old forms of English poetry as well as any Englishman - or better.

Quotations: “Fluctuations in a journal’s character and standards, a lack of fixed ideals and clearly defined aims, the indecision and instability that lead to trying first one tack and then another in the hope of catching the winds of popular favor, are usually typified in capricious changes of external form.”

Membership

Member Chicago Literary Club.

Personality

As his friends noted, Browne was always an “austere” man, with highly conservative and selective tastes.

Connections

On June 26, 1867, Browne married Susan Seaman Brooks. They had six sons and three daughters.

Father:: William Goldsmith Browne
Mother:: Eunice (Fisher) Browne
Spouse:: Susan Seaman Brooks
Son:: Francis Granger Browne
Daughter:: Edna Lois Browne Trotter
Son:: Waldo Ralph Browne
Son:: Herbert Spencer Browne
Son:: Goldsmith Browne

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