BROWN, MARGARET WISE

born May 23, 1910, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. died Nov. 13, 1952, Nice, France prolific American writer of children's literature whose books, many of them classics, continue to engage generations of children and their parents. Brown was educated at Hollins College in Virginia, where she earned a B.A. in 1932. After attending the Writers Laboratory of the Bureau of Educational Experiments (the forerunner of the Bank Street College of Education), she worked as an editor of children's books in New York City for publisher William R. Scott, who as a parent of a Bank Street nursery student had learned of her interest in writing children's books herself. Simultaneously she began her career as a writer of children's books, illustrated by Clement Hurd and others, that would result in the production of more than 100 titles, including such classics as The Runaway Bunny (1942) and Goodnight Moon (1947). In 1941 she left Scott's employ to concentrate full-time on writing, sometimes completing five or more children's titles a year. In addition to publishing books under her own name, she used the pen names Timothy Hay, Golden MacDonald, and (in collaboration with Edith Thacher Hurd, another leading author) Juniper Sage. Something of an eccentric, Brown led a somewhat complicated personal life. Following a number of broken engagements, a period of psychoanalysis, and a stormy 10-year relationship with the actor John Barrymore's ex-wife, she met and fell in love with a much younger man. Their plans to marry never materialized, however. In 1952, while in Nice, she died of complications from an emergency surgery.