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A large archive of manuscripts and related literary papers of gay writer Richard Blake Brown including novels, plays, poetry, travel writing, and memoirs. The collection consists of about 130 holograph and typescript manuscripts: (50 notebooks of holograph manuscripts; 38 volumes of bound typescripts; 39 unbound typescripts; two holograph booklets; one unbound holograph manuscript); seven of Brown s published novels (five of which are annotated by him and have extra material laid in); and about 60 miscellaneous items (including manuscript extracts, letters. and photographs). The bulk of the writings date from the late 1920s-1950s. Richard Blake Brown (1902-1968) is an overlooked figure in the British literary scene of the interwar period: a remarkable man and an exceptional writer, Brown s open homosexuality was a source of puzzlement even to fellow gay writer Denton Welch, who once exclaimed in response to a 1946 letter from Brown: "Is this exhibitionism or vanity or what?" The collection contains a number of references to the Queen s dressmaker Norman Hartnell, another prominent homosexual and lifelong friend of Brown's, and Brown s homosexual sensibility permeates the whole of the present collection: from his teenage memoir *The Remarkable History of Hilden Abbey* in which he describes dressing up with his brother Lincoln and Tonbridge schoolfellow Rupert Croft-Cooke as monks and abbots to a number of misogynistic limericks written in the late 1960s; and in other writings such as *My Aunt in Pink* and *The Gaiety of God*. However such honesty was received at the time, it now looks courageous in the light of the sort of punishment meted out to Croft-Cooke, who was imprisoned for homosexual activities in 1953. Whatever view the authorities may have taken, it does appear that Brown was indulged by his friends: a copy of Graham Greene s 1958 play *The Potting Shed* survives (not in this collection), inscribed to: "My dear Richard, Many thanks for your letter which has broken a long silence. I am glad you liked the play. What have you been doing with yourself? Any more books on the way? I heard rumours of you at the wedding and how you eclipsed every other male there. Affectionately, Graham." A useful account of Brown s life up to 1947 can be found in his unpublished autobiography *A Life in the Shade*: born in 1902, in Boston, of American parents who brought him to England later in the same year (because his father had invented a system of power-signaling for London s Underground Railways), he attended Tonbridge and Berkhamsted public schools, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating in 1923. He then joined the Old Vic Company for a season of Shakespeare as a student-actor, uncertain as to whether the stage or the church should be his profession. Having decided on the latter, he studied theology at St. Stephen s House, Oxford, and became one of the 12 curates of the famous parish of St. Mary s Portsea, but voluntarily resigned his orders three years later. He then published 12 books during the 1930s, including *The Apology of a Young Ex-Parson*, and returned to the exercise of his ministry with the approval of Archbishop of Canterbury (Doctor Cosmo Gordon Lang) and went to work in a mining village in Derbyshire. For six years he was a temporary chaplain (R.N.V.R.), including chaplain of the Flagship HMS *Renown* during the sinking of the *Bismarck* episode. After the war he continued in his ministry as a prison chaplain. Brown remained an inveterate writer throughout his life, and published 14 novels: *Miss Higgs and her Silver Flamingo* (Duckworth, 1931), *Yellow Brimstone* (Duckworth, 1931), *The Apology of a Young Ex-Parson* (Duckworth, 1932), *A Broth of a Boy* (Fortune Press, 1934), *The Blank Cheque* (Fortune Press, 1934), *Joy in Jeopardy* (Fortune Press, 1935), *Rococo Coffin* (Fortune Press, 1936), *My Aunt in Pink* (Martin Secker, 1936), *Spinsters, Awake!* (Martin Secker, 1937), *Bicycle Belle* (Fortune Pre.
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