Irving Browne

Irving Browne was a nineteenth-century American lawyer, legal editor, essayist, and poet whose writing joined professional learning with humor and a collector's love of books. The House of the Heart appeared in 1897 from the Peter Paul Book Company as a volume of poetry. Browne also produced legal treatises, edited the Albany Law Journal, translated Racine, and wrote bibliophilic essays collected in works such as In the Track of the Bookworm. Library records date his life from 1835 to 1899 and document a bibliography ranging from criminal law and domestic relations to satire and verse. That unusual combination made him a recognizable figure in American legal literature as well as in late nineteenth-century book culture. The House of the Heart shows the literary side of a career more commonly represented by case collections and legal reference works.