Samuel Ashley Brown

Samuel Ashley Brown, Ph.D. is an educator, an essayist, and confidante to such literary figures as Flannery O'Connor and Elizabeth Bishop. Dr. Ashley Brown is a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.

Early life

Born in Louisville, KY, in 1923, Ashley attended the City Boys High School and worked for the mayor during his summers. His family home on the 1200 block of 4th street in downtown Louisville would become, years later, known as the Rocket House, a semi-famous house/venue for fledgling bands like Rodan and Slint. The house is featured prominently in the 1994 independent film, Half Cocked.

Teaching Career

In the early 1940s, he taught literature courses at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, as an assistant professor. It was in Lexington that he befriended several notable figures, including the artists Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. In the classroom he taught the likes of TV-journalist Roger Mudd and novelist Tom Wolfe, who published his first short story in the college's literary magazine co-founded by Ashley Brown, The Shenadoah. After several years of teaching in Virginia, he moved to New Haven to complete a Masters' degree at Yale. With a growing interest in the Fugitives, a group of mostly Southern writers who gravitated around Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Conrad Aiken, Ashley moved to Nashville to study with Ransom and others; in 1958 he finished his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt and moved to California. He remained close friends with Allen and Caroline Tate.

California Period

Taking a position at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1958, Ashley would often play jazz piano around town in restaurants and bars. His repertoire included the Cole Porter songbook, cool jazz numbers, and classical compositions. It was while living in Santa Barbara that Ashley became friendly with Elizabeth "Ma" Duncan -- the infamous woman who arranged to have her son's wife murdered and ended up dying on death row. She was the last woman to be executed by the State of California. In fact, Ashley was living in the apartments on Garden Street in downtown Santa Barbara when the police arrested her and interrogated many of the neighbors (including him).

outh Carolina Period

In 1960, he accepted a tenure-track position at the University of South Carolina. Through his friends at Vanderbilt, particularly Brainard Cheney he became friendly with the Southern novelist Flannery O'Connor. On many visits to her home at Andalusia, Ashley became quite close to Flannery and her mother, Regina. Indeed, much of Flannery's relationship with Ashley is documented in the book The Habit of Being. During two separate sabbaticals, he also lived and taught at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. During his first two-year stint in Brazil, he befriended the American poet Elizabeth Bishop, with whom he would share a lengthy correspondence and friendship.

During his 34 years at the University of South Carolina, Ashley Brown has edited several books on the Fugitives¹, other Southern writers and Brazilian literature. Although he officially retired in 1994, he continued teaching through 2003. He still lives in Columbia, SC.

References

¹The Poetry Reviews of Allen Tate, 1924-1944., edited by Ashley Brown. Louisiana State Univ. Pr.: Baton Rouge, 1983.
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