Rhythm in the Novel

E.K. Brown (1905-1951) graduated from the University of Toronto in the year that Dr. Alexander retired. After graduate studies at Toronto and the Sorbonne, he was professor of English at the universities of Toronto, Manitoba, Cornell, and Chicago. He died in 1951.

“It is poignantly fitting that the last published work of E.K. Brown should be entitled Rhythm in the Novel and should deal with various aspects of those mysterious patterns of repetition which constantly occur in life and which the best novelists strive to depict in their work. . . . Rhythm in the Novel is therefore critical writing at its best. Brown reveals an ancient truth: to understand a man’s work, you must love it”  - Hugh MacLennan “The writing in these essays is notably graceful, and the ideas luminously clear. Though modest in scope they are a definite contribution to the esthetics of the novel. . . . Aside from their intrinsic worth they point up how great a loss to contemporary criticism his untimely death was” - Saturday Review of Literature “In his illustrations, time and again, Professor Brown points out themes or symbols-like the hay in Howard’s End-that we haven’t noticed, and that make us realize more subtle thought and craftsmanship on the part of the novelist than we had been aware of. Again, it’s in this deepening of our appreciation of a work that the value of Mr. Brown’s book lies” - Margaret Stobie ("Critically Speaking," CBC) “Mr. Brown writes pleasantly and reflectively. . . . The best parts of Mr. Brown’s book trace the ‘growth of a symbol as it accretes meaning from a succession of contexts’” - Times Literary Supplement