Edward Stevenson Browne (VC, CB) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
On 29 March1879 at Inhlobana (Hlobane), South Africa, when the Mounted Infantry were being driven in by the enemy, Lieutenant Browne twice galloped back under heavy fire and helped on to his horse one of the mounted men who would otherwise have fallen into enemy hands.
Browne was a relative unknown replacing Seymour, a well-known artist and a highly experienced periodical cartoonist who had sold satirical prints in his own right.
In the summer of 1837, Browne accompanied Charles and Catherine Dickens on a holiday trip to Belgium; by the end of the year, he and Dickens were at work on a new picaresque novel, Nicholas Nickleby, research for which required their on-site investigation of several notorious Yorkshire schools.
With the renwed interest in Browne's work that occurred shortly after his death, the publisher (she theorizes) "remembered the plates and included them in an edition of Shakespeare" (private communication 11 June 2006) that was already planned.
Surtees was fortunate in the assistance of two young artists who were then carrying on the succession of Alken and George Cruikshank.
Both John Leech and H. Browne were keen sportsmen and good artists; and, though Leech never learned to draw a horse, while Browne’s horses were as good as Alken’s, both men were comic draughtsmen of inventiveness and humour.
Browne found good material in the novels of another sporting writer, Francis Edward Smedley, a cripple with a taste for sporting literature.
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