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John G. Brandon (1879 – 1941) was an Australian-born writer known for his English crime fiction writing.[2]

John G. Brandon
Bornc.(1879-01-01)1 January 1879
Richmond, Victoria, Australia
Diedc.1 January 1941(1941-01-01) (aged 62)
Newbury, Berkshire, England
OccupationNovelist
NationalityEnglish-Australian
GenreDetective fiction
Spouse
  • Rachel Mary Pemberton[1]
  • Ruby Oates

Birth & parents


Brandon was born John Gordon Joyce in Richmond, Victoria. He was the first son of actors John Gordon Joyce (1836-1903) and Mary Emma Bate (1858-1915). His mother was known professionally as Emma Bronton.[3] His parents married on 11 May 1878 in Melbourne and on 20 May 1895 his mother petitioned for a divorce from her husband on the grounds of desertion, drunkenness and cruelty. The Joyce's had been on tour in September 1888. Mr Joyce was discharged from the company in which they were acting, and while she went to Auckland it was arranged that he should go to Melbourne, where their two children were living with the partitioner's mother. Mrs Joyce gave him £16 to pay his expenses but he didn't go to the grandmother's house. Mr Joyce Snr had not been since nor had he in any way contributed to the support of Mrs Joyce and their children since that time. The suit was undefended and a decree nisi was granted, with costs against Mr Joyce.[4]


Brandon family


In 1895 his mother married again in Melbourne and the young Joyce took the name of his stepfather and became known as John Gordon Brandon. George Otto Woods Brandon (1860-1898) was born in Liverpool, England, and from the 1890s was a hotelier in Perth, Western Australia.[5] After moving to the Eastern States of Australia he was also an actor known by the stage name of W. B. O’Grady.[6] He had on several occasions produced plays in the Shepparton District and he and his wife where hoteliers for a time in Mooroopna.[7] He died by his own hand shooting himself at 38 years of age[8] in Shepparton, Victoria, on 12 December 1898.[9] At the time he was secretary of the Public Library at Shepparton and was insolvent.[10] When John G. Brandon’s maternal grandmother Mary Emma Bate (née Draper) died on 20 July 1896 his mother Mary Emma Brandon received an estate worth £1572.[11] Brandon’s twice married mother Mary Emma Brandon, but still known by the stage name of Emma Bronton, died in London in 1915, at 52 years of age. She had recently appeared in Cosmo Hamilton's London stage production of The Blindness of Virtue. Press reports at the time refer to her son as the English writer Jack Brandon.[12]


Brother


His younger brother Gordon Bate Joyce (1880–1951) was born to John Gordon and Mary Emma Joyce at their residence, Burrawarna, in Richmond, on 1 April 1880. Little is known of John G. Brandon’s education but his younger brother was educated at Xavier College in Melbourne.[13] Known socially from the 1890s as Gordon Joyce-Brandon[14] in business circles he was known as Gordon Brandon. He married Ada Amelia Isherwood (1879-1962) in Victoria and they moved to Sydney. They had seven children with their first son being named in recognition of his step grandfather George Otto Woods Brandon and his birth father Gordon Bate Joyce as Gordon Otto Joyce-Brandon (1901-1952). After moving to New South Wales Gordon and Ada Joyce-Brandon first lived in Waverley before living on acreage at Burrawarna Park, Cabramatta. As a molasses merchant in Sussex Street, Sydney and on the Parramatta River at Mortlake Gordon Joyce-Brandon later owned the Claud Hamilton designed block of mansion flats Tennyson House in Darlinghurst. The Joyce-Brandon’s owned Resthaven on Scotland Island and a house on Thyra Road Palm Beach before dying at their residence in Lane Cove.[15]


Australian actor


Little else is known of his younger life in Melbourne. It is said that he was a heavyweight boxer before he became a writer but there is no evidence of that. He became an actor in Melbourne and Victorian regional towns using the name of John G. Brandon. He was then stage manager for the Hawtrey Theatre Company in Sydney.


Emigrates to England


As John Gordon Joyce he married in Melbourne in 1900 and had two children, a girl and a boy. The family moved to England around 1909 and as John Gordon Joyce he and his family are listed in the 1911 English Census as living in Wandsworth with Joyce's occupation given as dramatic author. He is by then writing under his acting name of John G. Brandon. There are several newspaper reports around this time of English touring companies performing plays by Brandon in Australia.[16][17]


Writer


One of Brandon's first plays was a topical one written in 1915 on Belgium and the war entitled There Was a King in Flanders.[18]


Second marriage and death


His first marriage broke up and his wife returned to Australia with their young son, but their daughter Lillian, who later wrote under the name of Grania Brandon stayed with her father. Joyce married Ruby Oates in 1917 and his surname is given as Brandon on the marriage record. He had a son by his second wife Ruby, the writer Gordon Brandon and a daughter Jean. John Gordon Brandon died in Newbury, Berkshire in 1941 with the surname Brandon on his death certificate.


Academic study


John Arnold from the School of Languages, Literature, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University has written about the careers of the Australian expatriate writers, John Gordon Brandon and Robert Coutts Armour, better known as Coutts Brisbane, bringing them to a current Australian readership.[19]


Novelist


His novels included:


Series


His Patrick Aloysius McCarthy series included:

The following in his Patrick Aloysius McCarthy series were published posthumously and were actually written by his son Gordon Brandon.

His Sexton Blake series included:


References


  1. "Personal Matters". Kyabram Free Press And Rodney And Deakin Shire Advocate. Victoria, Australia. 2 February 1915. p. 3. Retrieved 19 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. John G. Brandon 1879–1941 Great War Theatre Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  3. "Dramatic". Australian Town and Country Journal. Vol. XXXV, no. 907. New South Wales, Australia. 28 May 1887. p. 19. Retrieved 15 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. "DIVORCE COURT". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 15, 257. Victoria, Australia. 24 May 1895. p. 3. Retrieved 15 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. "Advertising". The Daily News. Vol. XII, no. 5, 944. Western Australia. 21 May 1894. p. 1. Retrieved 19 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. "INTERCOLONIAL NEWS". Tasmanian News. No. 5553. Tasmania, Australia. 19 December 1898. p. 4 (THIRD EDITION). Retrieved 18 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. "SUICIDE AT SHEPPARTON". The West Australian. Vol. 14, no. 3, 992. Western Australia. 15 December 1898. p. 6. Retrieved 19 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. "AN ACTOR'S EXIT". Murchison Advocate. Vol. I, no. 16. Western Australia. 17 December 1898. p. 3. Retrieved 19 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  9. "Family Notices". The Australasian. Vol. LXVII, no. 1760. Victoria, Australia. 23 December 1899. p. 56. Retrieved 18 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  10. "NEW INSOLVENTS". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 15, 816. Victoria, Australia. 10 March 1897. p. 5. Retrieved 19 October 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. "Wills and Bequests". Table Talk. No. 590. Victoria, Australia. 16 October 1896. p. 2. Retrieved 21 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. "MUSICAL AND DRAMATIC NOTES". The West Australian. Vol. XXXI, no. 4, 016. Western Australia. 13 February 1915. p. 9. Retrieved 15 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  13. "OLD XAVERIANS IN SYDNEY". The Catholic Press. No. 830. New South Wales, Australia. 16 November 1911. p. 43. Retrieved 15 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  14. "Family Notices". The Australasian. Vol. XXVIII, no. 735. Victoria, Australia. 1 May 1880. p. 25. Retrieved 21 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  15. "BUSINESS MAN DIES, AGED 70". The Daily Telegraph. Vol. XV, no. 268. New South Wales, Australia. 1 February 1951. p. 11. Retrieved 15 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  16. "THE NATIONAL AMPHITHEATRE". The Daily Telegraph. No. 10129. New South Wales, Australia. 13 November 1911. p. 7. Retrieved 20 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  17. "NATIONAL AMPHITHEATRE". The Age. No. 17826. Victoria, Australia. 6 May 1912. p. 8. Retrieved 20 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  18. Gateways to the First World War Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  19. John Arnold — Monash University John G. Brandon and ‘Coutts Brisbane’: Two Australian contributors to Sexton Blake and inter-war popular fiction Retrieved 20 January 2022.
  20. Fantastic Fiction Retrieved 15 January 2022.


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