Edward
Granville Browne a as born in Gloucestershire in 1862 and passed
his youth in New-castle-upon-Tyne. He was educated at Eton (where he found
theatrical curriculum then in force boring and impossible), Glenalmond and
Pembroke College Cambridge. His interest in Oriental matters was first
aroused by the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 and at Cambridge he read Oriental
languages as well as medicine. His father, a successful engineer, insisted
that Oriental languages was too hazardous as a profession and that he must
qualify as a doctor; this he did between going down from Cambridge in 1884
and undertaking his only long visit to Persia in 1887-8.
It is this visit
which was the subject of A Year amongst the Persians and, as appears from
that book, one of his main purposes was to make contact with the
Zoroastrians.
He returned to
Cambridge to take up a fellowship at Pembroke and, except for
comparatively short visits to Turkey, Egypt and North Africa, never left
Cambridge again.
However, he
remained in very close touch with Persia through a host of friend sand
correspondents, and not only produced the Literary History of Persia but
was also closely concerned in the events following the Persian revolution
of 1905. There was a real threat that Persia might be partitioned between
Great Britain and Russia, arid it was widely believed t h a this Persia
Committee was the decisive factor in the preservation of Persian
independence. His private fortune enabled him to help many Persian and
other political exiles.
He married in 1906
and died in 1926, leaving two sons. His memory is still green in Persia,
and with in the last decade one of his grand-daughters who spent a year
there received much kindness, not only from his old friends and pupils,
but also from strangers who felt for him the same kind of affection that
the Greeks feel (or till recently felt) for Lord Byron. His statue in
Teheran is said to have been the only statue of it European which was
spared during the rule of Dr Mossadeq.
