Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “Thomas Browne” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Thomas Browne

(1605 – 1682)

Thomas Browne was born in London on October 19, 1605. After graduating M.A. from Broadgates Hall, Oxford (1629), he studied medicine privately and worked as an assistant to an Oxford doctor.  He then attended the Universities of Montpellier and Padua, and in 1633 he was graduated M.D. at Leiden. Browne’s medical education in Europe also earned him incorporation as M.D. from Oxford, and in 1637- he moved to Norwich, where he lived and practiced medicine until his death in 1682.

Browne first came to the attention of readers with his best-known work, Religio medici, which he wrote around 1635. The book became a best-seller, later being translated into several European ‘languages. Religio medici is about Browne’s personal Christian – faith, Religio medici is one of the great prose-works of the Early Modern period of English literature. Browne’s innate curiosity never failed him, and his other works reflect his multi-faceted personality, too. In 1646, he wrote Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or gar Errors, which tackled the subject of superstition and popular misconceptions about various subjects. Browne was also a keen antiquarian (as were so many others of his class and education), and his next hook, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial (1658) was the result. Working from some recent archaeological discoveries near Norwich of what were thought at the time to be Roman funeral urns, Browne produced a study of funeral customs, which expanded into his thoughts on death and the uselessness of such rituals and commemorations against death’s inevitable power. It is this work where we find Browne’s most elaborate rhetoric prose, which is lush and metaphorical, almost poetical in nature. Together with this book went a work entitled The Garden of Cyrus, in which Browne wrote about the history of horticulture. This book is also the source of his famous idea of the quincunx, a shape with five parts, one at each corner (rectangle), and one in the middle, which he thought was present everywhere in nature; the number five, of Course, had mystical and Neoplatonic meanings which. fascinated Browne’s mind.

The overall impression one gets from .reading Browne is of an urbane, sophisticated and witty writer, who delights in collecting trivia and arcane information. His style is elegant and, for modern tastes, probably rather too learned, but his love of what he does is obvious, and he is a good example of the gentleman-antiquary, a man who revels in obscure knowledge of ancient rites and customs and wants readers to share his enthusiasm for these things. He also displays tolerance and good humour, something rare in a century of conflict and changing values.