During May 2020, I had the honor to write a guest blog for the Music Division of the Library of Congress to coincide with the publication of Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century America. In “Tracing Augusta Browne in the Library of Congress,” I recall my journey across two decades as I investigated different leads within the largest library collection in the world: https://blogs.loc.gov/music/2020/05/tracing-augusta-browne-in-the-library-of-congress/
Author: Bonny Miller
Augusta Browne’s music has long been confused with the work of another composer, sometimes identified as “Miss Browne,” but more often as the sister of Mrs. Hemans. Even during Browne’s lifetime, people muddled the two composers. Who was who, and how can one determine which is the composer when the sheet music asserts “Miss Browne”? The simple answer is that Augusta Browne consistently used her given name, “Miss Augusta Browne” or “Miss A. Browne.” Thus we can identify her works with certainty. By contrast, publishers of songs by “Miss Browne” usually cited her celebrated sister—poet Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans—in a prominent place on the cover or title page of sheet music imprints.
When I began to browse university library shelves in 1983 in search of music published in magazines from the past, I was surprised by how many pieces indicated women as the composers.[1] I saw so many examples that I began to compile the names of women and their music that I found in different periodicals.[2] Augusta Browne was one of the names that turned up most frequently in American magazines. Between 1840 and 1850 she published songs and piano solos in at least six different periodical titles.[3] Browne’s keyboard dance The Columbian Quick-Step—published in the Columbian Magazine in December 1844—was one of the first pieces that I selected for use in lecture-recitals about magazine music.[4]
Women’s History Month March 2020 is an ideal time to highlight American composer and author Augusta Browne. It’s now 200 years since Augusta Browne was born in Dublin, Ireland, and came to North America as an infant. And it’s now 100 years since the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that guaranteed American women the right to vote. What better time to find inspiration in a forebear for women musicians as they seek their own paths in culture and commerce?
Augusta Who?
Who was Augusta Browne? Augusta Browne composed and published music from her teenage years until her death in 1882. She produced some two hundred works of music over her lifetime and also authored short stories, poems, many essays, and two books. Browne energetically pursued publication of music and prose during the Victorian era despite strict codes of conduct and gendered roles for women. I first encountered her music in one antebellum magazine after another, beginning with Godey’s Lady’s Book, followed by the Columbian Magazine, then in a dozen other periodicals. Her entrepreneurial attitude leapt out from magazine pages. She was a go-getter during an era we do not usually associate with career women.