His daughter, Saffrey Brown, told The Gleaner that her father succumbed to cancer. He had been diagnosed with the disease early this year.

Born in Port of Spain, Brown was the only child of a magistrate. He attended St Mary's College in Trinidad and later the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, and University of Toronto.

Creative writing teacher

Brown had lived in Jamaica for the past 10 years, teaching creative writing privately, as well as at the UWI and Lesley University in Boston, Massachusetts.

His weekly 'In Our Time' column, first published in The Trinidad Express in 1984, was a popular read. It later appeared in the Jamaica Observer. He worked briefly at The Gleaner as editor of the publication's Sunday Arts section.

Brown was an admirer of Caribbean literary giants like his compatriot V.S. Naipaul and the St Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. He was a prolific writer of poems and short stories. On The Coast, Voyages, Child Of The Sea and Landscape with Heron, were just some of his collections.

He also edited Derek Walcott: Selected Poetry, a collection of Walcott's poems, which was published in 1981.

One of Brown's most passionate projects was his biography of Jamaica sculptor, Edna Manley. The first phase, Edna Manley: The Private Years, was released by British publisher Andre Deutsch in 1976.

Brown was working on the second phase of the Manley biography at the time of his death.

He is survived by two daughters.

- Howard Campbell

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