The House with the Green Shutters (Dodo Press)

George Douglas Brown (1869-1902) was a Scottish novelist. He studied Classics at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating he travelled to London and worked as a journalist - contributing articles and stories to Blackwoods Magazine - and a part-time editor and reader for publishing houses. In 1899 he published Love and a Sword under the pseudonym Kennedy King, the same pseudonym he used for his articles, and the next year Famous Fighting Regiments published under the pseudonym George Hood. He then started work at Haslemere on The House with the Green Shutters, which was published in 1901 under the pseudonym George Douglas. The book was a success, and he planned a second novel to be called The Incompatibles, but shortly afterwards he contracted pneumonia and died at the home of his friend Andrew Melrose. The House with the Green Shutters gives a strongly outlined picture of the harder and less genial aspects of Scottish life and character, and was regarded as a useful corrective to the more roseate presentations of the kailyard school of J. M. Barrie and Ian Maclaren.