Oliver Madox Brown (known as Nolly to his friends and family) was born at Grove Villas, Finchley, on 20 January 1855 and died on 5 November 1874, the first anniversary of the publication of his single novel, Gabriel Denver. The middle child of the painter Ford Madox Brown and his second wife, Emma Hill, Oliver was the brother of Catherine Madox Brown, who married the music critic Franz Hueffer, and the uncle of Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford). His half sister, Lucy Madox Brown--whose mother was Ford Madox Brown's first wife, Elizabeth Bromley--married, in the year of Oliver's death, William Michael Rossetti. Brown's connections thus link him on both sides with figures prominent in literature and art.

Most of what is known about his early life consists of anecdotes exemplifying his precocity. What Westland Martson states perfunctorily in the Dictionary of National Biography, that "from early boyhood he showed remarkable capacity, both...