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Former Cambridge University Press publisher Dr Andrew Brown has died at the age of 63.
The CUP stalwart, who retired last year, had been suffering from cancer.
Brown joined CUP in 1976, and rose through the ranks of the company to became m.d. of academic and professional publishing in 2002. His tenure coincided with “one of the most successful phases ever in the long history of academic publishing, with sustained double-digit sales growth and major acceleration of the CUP presence in new markets around the world”, the publisher said in a statement.
Brown also presided over “significant development” of the CUP’s digital presence, first in journals and then in books.
“He played a very significant personal role in the global expansion of the academic business, with a particular interest in and affinity for the development of the CUP publishing proposition throughout Asia and the Middle East. This agenda he continued to pursue in the final phase of his CUP career, as development director for academic publishing," said CUP.
As a research student Brown became a leading expert on the novels of Bulwer Lytton, and he “always enjoyed a good editorial tussle, notably with the legendary figure of Jerome Lindon, Samuel Beckett’s publisher at Editions du Minuit and one of the principal obstacles to the edition of the Letters of Samuel Beckett which has become the flagship of a very significant part of CUP’s activities”.
Brown’s cancer diagnosis came as he prepared to retire from CUP last year.
The publisher said: “The rapid progress of his illness has cruelly robbed one of the most energetic and enquiring minds in scholarly publishing of the chance to undertake the myriad of things he and his family had planned for his retirement.
“He will be greatly missed, both by the wider academic publishing community around the world, by the Fellowship and Staff of Magdalene College, Cambridge, by the community of Victorian scholars and bibliographers, and by amused retailers and airline staff the world over, for whom an encounter with Dr Brown was one never to be forgotten.”
Brown is survived by his wife Lorna and their children Daniel and Helena, and by his brother Anthony.