Though Wynyard Browne wrote only four plays that were produced, he will be remembered as a gentle, civilized dramatist with a gift for potent dialogue and an affection for his characters that, with the aid of good casts, he could transmit to an audience. The son of Eleanor Muriel Verena Malcolmson Browne and Barry Mathew Charles Sleater Browne, a clergyman, Wynyard Barry Browne was born in London. Educated at Marlborough and Christ's College, Cambridge, he had been a journalist and novelist before turning to the theater.

His first writing success came early, with his 1934 novel Queenie Molson, a portrait of a Communist undergraduate of that period, accomplished with wry humor and a sharp eye for character. After the publication of his novels Sheldon's Way (1935) and The Fire and the Fiddle (1937), it appeared that he was on his way to becoming a major novelist; however, he remained a working...