The grammar of English grammars with an introduction historical and critical ... and a key to the oral exercises: to which are added four appendixes, pertaining separately to the four parts of grammar

New York and London: Samuel S. & William Wood, and Sampson Low, Son & Co, 1858. London edition after the second edition, revised and improved, large thick 8vo, pp. xx, [21]-1070, [2]; engraved frontispiece portrait (spotted); rebound in modern full green cloth, gilt title on spine; owner's signature on title page, text clean and sound, very good. The largest grammar ever compiled, with a useful 10-p., double column "Catalogue of English Grammars and Grammarians" which gives a short-title list of more than 350 related volumes consulted by the author. Brown, a Quaker and a native of Rhode Island, enjoyed considerable success as a teacher and a compiler of text books, some of which were still in print as late as 1929 in New York. Of English grammars, only Cobbett's appears to have enjoyed so long a life. The Grammar of English Grammars was his last and largest work. "Brown had a real gift for defining terms and for discriminating usage, but the merits of his book are buried under a heap of pedantic rubbish. As a scientific student of the English language he has no standing whatever, but over the methods of teaching grammar and over the content of later American text-books he has exercised a strong and not entirely unhappy influence" (DAB II, 119ff.).