At the time of his death in Tenby from apoplexy, Brown was Manager of the Burton, Uttoxeter, and Ashbourn Bank, a position he had held for twenty five of the forty two years he had been connected with the bank. He was interested in all branches of natural history, and was recorded to have had enormous stores of treasures, geological, zoological and botanical, British and exotic, which he kept in a large room adjoining his house.
Allingham (1924), in his account of insect sales noted ' A very famous sale of 1877 was that of the collection of Mr Edwin Brown, a banker of Burton on Trent. This collection contained most wonderful specimens, among them a great portion of the exotic beetles personally collected by Mr A.R. Wallace, the well-known naturalist, and collections formed by Count Castlenau, Mr Saunders, Major Parry, M. Thomson, M. Deyrolle, and Mr Carter. It was attended by all the naturalists of any note in England and on the Continent; R. Oberthur, the famous French coleopterist, attended in person, one of the only two occasions on which he personally attended an auction sale, and Count Mniszech's curator was there. Single specimens sold for £5 10s (Amblychila piccolomini); £7 10s (Platychila pallida); Oberthur paid £9 19s 6d for Mouhotia gloriosa and Deyrolle bought a pair (Anacamptorrhina ignipes) for £10 10s. Armitage, the Academcian, bought up many specimens for models for his Academy picture 'After an Entomological Sale' painted in 1878...As a whole the collection realized £1,658 19s'. This included the highest price ever paid for a single insect apart from a butterfly.
Browne published very little, his most notable works being the entomological portion of Sir Oswald Moseley's Natural History of Tutbury, 1863; and a paper on Australian Carabidae in Trans.Ent.Soc.Lond., 1869, 351-353.
Specimens from Brown's collections exist in Bolton Museum (acquired with the P.B. Mason collection) and in the NHM. Riley (1906), 582, records 'Edwin Brown had very extensive collections of Coleoptera. He purchased James Thomson's collection of Geodephaga, or at least a considerable portion of it. He also had a large number of specimens marked 'ex. cab. Castelnau'. He purchased A.R.Wallace's collection of Malayan Cetonidae. His collections were sold at auction at Stevens's rooms in March, 1877. The Trustees purchased several lots of Cicindelidae and Carabidae, including types of Thomson, Guerin, etc.. Some of the Carabidae were in the original cartons as purchased from Thomson. The Trustees also purchased lots of Cetoniadae, including Euryomia, with all Wallace's types, and a series of Protaetia. Other lots were purchased by Mr Pascoe, and these are also now in the Museum.' Gunther (1912), 37, records that 3,300 specimens were involved. Smith (1986), 106, records that over 1,500 specimens of Coleoptera and Hymenoptera in the HDO were purchased at the March 1877 sale for £7 11s 6d and included some Carabidae from Wallace and Brewer. As far as Brown's acquisitions from the Castelnau collection are concerned, a note in the Ent.mon.Mag., 38, 8,is interesting 'The Carabidae were purchased by Marquis Doria and presented to the Genoa Museum. It was the Cicindelidae not the Carabidae that Mr Brown acquired'.
Lott (2009), 8, records that Brown corresponded with James Harley and that they met together with John Plant at Burton on Trent on 7 September 1842. Pedersen (2002), 54, notices that there are 3 letters to J.C. Dale dated 1863-1868 in the RES, and Mick Cooper informs me that there is further information about Brown in Nottingham Museum.
There are obituaries in Ent.mon.Mag., 13, 1876, 116-117, and in Proc.Ent.Soc.Lond., 1876, xliii. FESL from 1849. (MD 12/01, 10/03, 1/22)