Brown, Bob, Cora, and Rose

Bob Brown—Robert Carlton Brown II (1886–1959)—was the son of a literary-minded Chicago couple. His mother, Cora Lovisa Brackett Brown (1861–1939), would become his collaborator on a series of cookbooks of which his wife, Rose Johnston Brown (1883–1952), was also a co-author. In addition to his writing (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry), Bob Brown’s career included publishing, bookselling, and the invention of a reading machine—a concept about eighty years ahead of its time.

Bob Brown entered the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1906, but flunked out after his freshman year. Moving to New York City shortly thereafter, he cranked out prodigious quantities of pulp fiction and, in 1913, published a best-selling novel; meanwhile, he was beginning to find his way as a poet. Brown had already visited England and Spain, but after his 1918 marriage to Rose Johnston the couple became world travelers, visiting or living in Chile, Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Austria, Mexico, the Far East, and the United Kingdom, with an extended sojourn in Paris.