| Summary: | Biography or History; Cassie Eileen Brown was born at Rose Blanche, Newfoundland on January 10, 1919, the second daughter of Wilson and Caroline (Hillier) Horwood. She began her schooling in North Sydney, Nova Scotia in 1924, spent two years at Rose Blanche Anglican School, and three years at St. Michael's Convent School, St. George's, before moving to St. John's with her family in 1930. In 1938 she graduated from Mercy Convent School in St. John's and went to work as a stenographer with the Danish American Seed and Supply Company Limited in St. John's. During the next nine years she was similarly employed with E. G. M. Came and Company (1940-1944), the Canadian Treasury (1944-1946) and The Standard Manufacturing Company Limited (1946-1947), all at St. John's. On September 10, 1945 Cassie Horwood married Donald Frank Brown, a St. John's consultant. After the birth of their first child, Derek, in 1947, she left the work force and did not return to it fulltime until 1959 when their other child, Christine, was nine.; Brown had the desire to write from her early childhood. In 1933, at the age of 14 she produced her first novel, "Double Trouble" which was later lost. Her involvement in the Newfoundland Hiking Club in the mid-1940's encouraged her to write about her outings and at the request of the Club President she began to contribute articles promoting hiking to local newspapers. Then, to quote from an interview she gave in 1973, "living got in the way of ambition": she got married and started a family. It was not until 1949 when she completed a course in creative writing from the Palmer Institute of Authorship in Hollywood, California, that she began to concentrate on writing as a vocation, albeit a tenuous one. By 1951 she had written her second novel, also entitled "Double Trouble", and although it was never published, she also recognized her need to write it and acknowledged the enjoyment she received from doing so.; What the writing of "Double Trouble" did help to accomplish was to rekindle her desire to become a good writer. She began by writing short stories, one of which "Black Rock Sunker" she entered in the 1955 Newfoundland Government sponsored Arts and Letters Competition. It won first place and was published in the June 1955 issue of; Many of these early short stories were by the local CBC radio network station in St. John's, and were read on air between 1955 and 1957 as part of a program entitled; By 1958 Brown had become involved with children's programming at the CBC. She wrote approximately 60 scripts for use in Atlantic School Broadcast programs including ones based on Newfoundland folk-songs and sea adventures. During the winter of 1959-1960 she wrote and hosted a young-children's radio program entitled; It was also in 1958 that Brown returned to writing for newspapers. She had been involved for a number of years with the Newfoundland Drama Festival and happened to be going to Corner Brook to attend the Festival being held there when she was approached by Grace Sparkes, Women's Editor and Drama Critic for; While she was writing for the CBC radio program in the 1950's, announcer John Murphy, later Mayor of St. John's, encouraged her to move from romance to history as a subject for her writings. She decided to give it a try and that was how she first became interested in the story of the; Cassie Brown died on December 30, 1986. Before her death she had completed work on her autobiography and a history of The Standard Manufacturing Company Limited, a St. John's firm where she had worked briefly in the 1940's: both remain unpublished.; Cassie Brown is recognized as a powerful writer with an ability to excite her readers and involve them in her stories. Her work has been acknowledged worldwide. A Spanish language edition of; In addition to her writing career, after her mother's death in 1965, brown assumed management of the family business, Karwood, a tourist resort at Donovans, near St. John's. She became very active in organizations involving writers including the Newfoundland Writers' Guild, the Writers' Union of Canada and the Authors Guild, Inc. She was also very involved with the activities of the Newfoundland Drama Society. Her contributions to both the Newfoundland Drama Society and the Newfoundland Writers' Guild were recognized by her fellow members when she was elected an Honorary Life Member of each organization.; Brown loved the outdoors. She was particularly attracted to the sea. Three times it almost took her life, twice in the ocean and once in a river. In many respects the sea became her muse: she recognized its power, took her inspiration from it, and held it in awe. It provided her with the subjects for three books and numerous short stories, articles and plays. Her writings about the sea are her timeless legacy. Cassie Brown is best remembered in the closing decades of the Twentieth Century as a writer of disaster stories. As the chronicler of three tragic incidents in Newfoundland's history, the; This collection contains the literary papers of Cassie Brown. Through it a researcher can trace her thirty-five-year career as a writer. During that time she wrote fiction and non-fiction. She worked in a variety of genres including short and long fiction, drama for the stage, radio and television, newspaper writing both as a reporter and a features writer and as editor of the women's page, magazine articles, short and long non-fiction, and autobiography. She published her own magazine and wrote and performed her own television program for children.; It is not only the finished side of her writing which is evident, however. Brown was a meticulous researcher and constant rewriter. This collection contains her working notes, research materials, rough drafts, manuscripts and revisions. One can readily see the development of works in progress from idea to published form. There is also a large collection of audiotapes which she used to interview subjects for her writings; many of these tapes contain first-hand accounts of survivors of the disasters she wrote about, information which is not available anywhere else.; Brown claims that is was the discovery of a large collection of photographs of survivors and victims of the; This collection could quite easily be subtitled "The Life of a Writer". It illustrates the work of an individual dedicated to her craft, the lengths to which she went to conduct her research and to verify the information she obtained, the satisfaction she received in transforming her ideas from thought process to paper copy, and the joy which resulted from publication. She played an active role in each facet of the production of her books as the extensive correspondence with her publishers demonstrates. She delighted in interaction with people: with those who were participants in her research, many of whom became good friends, and especially with schoolchildren, particularly after the publication of her books when she was in so much demand as a guest speaker at schools all over the province.
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