Samuel Ashley Brown was a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina

University of South Carolina

The University of South Carolina is a public, co-educational research university located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with 7 surrounding satellite campuses. Its historic campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House...

 who taught English

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 and comparative literature

Comparative literature

Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

. While he founded the literary magazine Shenandoah

Shenandoah (magazine)

Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee Review is a major literary magazine published by Washington and Lee University.- History :Originally a student-run quarterly, Shenandoah has evolved into a triannual literary journal edited by author R. T...

, his fame rests in great part on the fact that he was a confidante of two famous American women writers: the novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

 and the poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...

. Much was learned posthumously about both women when their respective correspondence with Brown was made public.

Brown was born in Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

 and raised at 1221 3rd Street, in a Victorian home that would become famous, years later, as the Rocket House -- a home that served as a venue for punk-rock and alternative bands during the years of 1991 through 1999. The house is featured prominently in the independent film Half-cocked

Half-cocked

Half-cocked can refer to:* half-cock* Halfcocked, a hard rock band* Half-Cocked...

. Ashely Brown attended Louisville Male High School

Louisville Male High School

Louisville Male Traditional High School is a public secondary school serving students in grades 9 through 12 in the southside of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is part of the Jefferson County Public School District....

 and went on to complete a Master's degree at Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

 and a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

. It was while teaching at Washington and Lee University

Washington and Lee University

Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States.The classical school from which Washington and Lee descended was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, about north of its present location. In 1776 it was renamed Liberty Hall in a burst of...

 that he helped to found Shenandoah -- a publication that featured the debut work of Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe

Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

 among others. He also taught at the University of Brazil and the University of California at Santa Barbara, before assuming the position at USC where he taught for 37 years. In 2007, his collected manuscripts and correspondence were purchased by Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

.

Ashley Brown died from natural causes on June 24, 2011, after spending the last year of his life in Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community.