BROWN, JAMES MACMILLAN (1846-1935) was born at Irvine, Scotland, the son of a shipowner, and educated in the first place at Irvine Academy. He proceeded to the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (where he graduated with first-class honours in mental philosophy and gained the rector's prize for an essay). There also he gained a five-year Snell exhibition on which he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1869. Owing to indifferent health he could not complete his course, and spent some time on the geological survey in Scotland (1873-74).

On the foundation of Canterbury College in 1875 Brown was appointed professor of classics and English. Five years later the onerous duties of this double chair were rearranged and he taught English history and English literature till 1895, when he resigned on account of ill-health. Brown devised a new and practical method of treating English composition, which was specially useful with backward students. Several volumes of his notes on English classics were published in New Zealand (including Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice and Esmond). He also published (in 1894) a manual of English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Brown was a member of the royal commission on higher education (1879-82) and was a member of the University Senate from 1879, vice-chancellor from 1916, and chancellor from 1923 till his death (on 18 Jan 1935). In 1901 he published, under the pseudonym of 'Godfrey Sweven', a novel entitled Riallaro, satirising life and politics in New Zealand. This was followed in 1903 by Limanora, a Utopia.

Brown rendered valuable service to New Zealand by his researches in Polynesian anthropology and ethnology, to which he devoted himself after his retirement, travelling widely in Pacific countries every year. About 1907 began his series of publications on the Polynesian people, including Maori and Polynesian (1907), The Riddle of the Pacific (1924), and Peoples and Problems of the Pacific (1927). In 1908 he published a volume, Modern Education and in 1914 a travel book, The Dutch East. His fine collection of curios and native art he left to Canterbury College, together with his library and an endowment for upkeep and £2,500 towards a library building. The residue of his estate he left to found a school of Pacific studies at that institution.

Brown married in 1887 Helen Connon, the first woman M.A. in New Zealand and the first woman to take the M.A. degree with honours at a British university. She was principal of the Christchurch Girls' High School (1882-94).

Cycl. N.Z., iii (p); Hight and Candy (p); Beaglehole; Who's Who N.Z., 1908, 1924, 1932; E. S. Grossman, In Memoriam, 1903 and Life of Helen M. Brown, 1905; The Press, 23 Feb 1903; 19, 21, 22, 23 Jan 1935 (p).

Reference: Volume 1, page 67

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