Audrey Brown centennial: "Born Oct. 29, 1904 in Nanaimo B.C., Audrey A. Brown was the 5th of 8 children born to Rosa Elizabeth and Joseph Miller Brown. She was one of Canada's most celebrated lyric poets in the 1930's and 40's. An avid reader, Audrey Brown had just 4 years of formal education. She began writing at age 6, and often illustrated her early work with drawings of fairy themes--a practice continued in her later children's literature. She first published locally at 16 and later made her living chiefly through freelance newspaper pieces. Audrey Brown continued to write into her 70's. However, with changing expectations in Canadian literature in the latter half of the century, her mode of verse, which echoed a 19th C. style, became increasingly ignored. In 1928 the Victoria College (Toronto) professor Pelham Edgar became an early Brown supporter, and in 1931 her first book, A Dryad in Nanaimo, gained national attention. A number of books followed including the biographical Log of the Lame Duck (1937) which drew from her extended time at hospital subsequent to a diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis at age 18. From 1935 to his death in 1937, Brown had an active correspondence friendship with former Prime Minister Robert Borden.
Her awards include: Officer of the Order of Canada (1967); the Lorne Pierce Gold Medal (1944); the Memorial Gold Medal of the Canadian Women's Press Club (1936), and a number of honourary memberships."