Background

John Carter Brown was born on August 28, 1797 and was the youngest son of Nicholas and Ann (Carter) Brown, and the grandson of John Carter, the second printer of Providence.

Career

After learning the details of the family business, John Carter Brown was sent to the Ohio country to select land for purchase, and though he met with experiences distasteful to his youthful fastidiousness, he acquired an interest in the section that led him later to interest himself in its problems and to contribute gifts of money to its struggling societies and institutions.

His tastes were for travel and the amenities of life rather than for the restraints of business, and though he never lost touch with the large responsibilities he had inherited, he gave his greatest care to the correct enjoyment of his fortune and to the collection of books.

In the beginning as a collector of the type common enough in the first half of the century, he brought together a library of works printed at the Aldine presses, a series of the magnificently printed polyglot Bibles, a few fine editions of the classics, and some notable sets of extra-illustrated books.

He possessed an inherited and a trained appreciation of relative cultural values united to the zeal of a real collector. He was not satisfied long with his gentleman-collector's library, and sometime in the early 1840's he found his interest turning toward early books on America.

In the course of the early dealings with Stevens, Brown arrived at a comprehensive conception of what the scope of his collection was to be; that is, that he was to buy for it printed books dealing with the Western Hemisphere from the Discovery to the year 1801.

With this field marked out he set about an intensive cultivation, remarkable in its results. Though James Lenox, his summer neighbor at Newport and great rival in the collection of American books, excelled him in the pursuit of the rare and elusive variant editions of familiar treasures, yet Brown's training and association led him to give to his American collection a comprehensiveness not attained by the other. These two collectors and their London agent, Henry Stevens of Vermont, created in the purchase and sale of Americana a new branch of the antiquarian book business. The collection was famous among scholars before 1865, when the first volume of a catalogue, compiled under the direction of John Russell Bartlett, was printed. This was completed in 1871, in four volumes, describing 5, 600 titles of books printed before the year 1800, which relate in some way to the Americas.

He died on June 11, 1874 at 77 years of age.

Achievements

• His gifts to Brown University in the form of books, land, and buildings, including a new building for the University Library, equaled in amount the benefactions of his father for whom the institution had been named. He was chosen a trustee of the University in 1828 and from then until his death he maintained an effective interest in its affairs. In 1846, he also became the first American to join the Hakluyt Society as a charter member, and in 1855, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. When Brown died his collection numbered about 7, 500 volumes, many of them of very great rarity, and the whole forming a well-rounded collection as useful to the scholar as to the bibliographer and bookman.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Bibliotheca Americana: A Catalogue of Books Relating to North and South America in the Library of the Late John Carter Brown of Providence, R. I.

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The John Carter Brown library: a history

Views

Brown made substantial gifts in continuation of his inherited obligations, but he drew out of active connection with some of those which had come to rely perhaps unduly upon his support, transferring his special attention to the Butler Hospital, of which his father was in a measure the founder, and to the Rhode Island Hospital, to which he gave largely in his lifetime.

Membership

John Carter Brown was a member of the American Antiquarian Society and of the Hakluyt Society.

Connections

On June 23, 1859, John Carter Brown married Sophia Augusta, daughter of the Hon. Patrick Brown, member of the Council and associate justice of the General Court of the Bahama Islands.

His widow transferred the title of the John Carter Brown collection to her elder son, John Nicholas Brown (1861 - 1900), by the terms of whose will it passed to trustees who deeded it to Brown University, with an endowment fund of $500, 000, and $150, 000 to erect a special building for it on the campus.

Father:

Nicholas Brown

Mother:

Ann (Carter) Brown

Grandfather:

Nicholas Brown, Sr.

1729–1791

collaborator:

Henry Stevens

Wife:

Sophia Augusta Brown

Daughter:

Sophia Augusta Brown

1867–1947

Son:

John Nicholas Brown I

1861–1900

Son:

Harold Brown

1863–1900

Brother:

Moses Brown

Brother:

John Brown

Brother:

Joseph Brown

associate:

Obadiah Rich

diplomat, bibliophile and bibliographer He came into touch with the bookseller Obadiah Rich, and later with Henry Stevens, a young Yale graduate in process of becoming a great London bookseller.

References

• The John Carter Brown Library : a history
• Annual report - Brown University, John Carter Brown Library
• Annual report - Brown University, John Carter Brown Library