Biography of Dan Brown | Life and Career

Biography of Dan Brown: American author Dan Brown is best known for his thriller movies and popular novels like Inferno and The Da Vinci Code. His works have sold over 200 million copies as of 2012 and have been translated into 57 languages. Brown’s works feature art, cryptography, and conspiracy theories. Let’s read more about Dan Brown.

Early Life of Dan Brown

Daniel Gerhard Brown was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on June 22, 1964. Brown has a younger sister Valerie and a brother Gregory. His father Richard G Brown was a mathematics teacher and wrote textbooks. He grew up on the campus of Philips Exeter Academy. His mother Constance trained as a church organist and student of sacred music. Brown attended Exeter’s public schools until the ninth grade. He was raised an Episcopalian.

His interest in puzzles and secrets stems from the household due to the presence of codes and ciphers were the linchpin tying together the music, mathematics, and languages in which his parents worked. Young Dan Brown spent hours used to spend his time with crossword puzzles and anagrams. He and his siblings participated in treasure hunts devised by their father on holidays and birthdays. Chapter 23 of The Da Vinci Code by one of his childhood treasure hunts.

After graduating from Philips Exeter, he attended Amherst College. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity. Brown was a writing student of visiting novelist Alan Lelchuk. He sang in the Amherst Glee Club and also played squash. Dan Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain. There he enrolled at the University of Seville in an art history course. He graduated from Amherst in 1986.

Career

After graduating, Brown dabbled in a musical career creating effects with a synthesizer. He self-produced a children’s cassette entitled SynthAnimals. The music has been compared to Gary Glitter. Brown then formed his own record company named Dalliance. He self-published a CD in 1990 entitled Perspective, which targeted the adult market. In 1991 Brown moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as a pianist and singer-songwriter. To support himself financially, he taught classes at Beverly Hills Preparatory School.

Brown also joined the National Academy of Songwriters. He also participated in several events. There he met his wife Blythe Newlon. In 1994 he released a CD titled Angels & Demons. Dan and his wife moved to Rye, New Hampshire in 1993. He became an English teacher at his alma mater Phillips Exeter. He gave Spanish classes to 6th to 8th graders at Lincoln Akerman School, in Hampton Falls. Brown has written a symphonic work titled Wild Symphony. On March 30, 2022, it was announced that it will turn into an animated feature film in the vein of Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

Writings and Works of Dan Brown

In 1993, while on a vacation in Tahiti Dan Brown read The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon and was inspired to preface his journey as a thriller writer. He co-wrote one humor book with his wife, 187 Men to Avoid, under the pseudonym of Danielle Brown. In 1996 he quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in the year 1998. A few months later he and his wife co-wrote another humor book named The Bald Book. He subsequently wrote Angels & Demons and Deception Point, published respectively in 2000 and 2001. His first three works had little success, however, his fourth book The Da Vinci Code was a best seller.

In 2005, Forbes magazine placed him at No. 12 on their “Celebrity 100” list. The same year he made it to the list of 100 Most Influential People of the year list of Time magazine. In 2009, Brown released his third novel featuring Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol. The book sold over one million hardcover and e-book copies on its first day, in the US, the UK, and Canada. Brown’s fourth novel featuring Robert Langdon, Inferno was released in May 2013.

Characters in Dan Brown’s works are often named after real-life people. Robert Langdon is named after the artist who created the ambigrams used for Angels & Demons, John Langdon. Robert’s character Jonas Faukman is named after the real-life editor of Dan Brown. He mentioned some of his characters were named after a French teacher at Exeter and New Hampshire librarian in Angels & Demons. Dan Brown published Origin, his seventh book of the Robert Langdon series.

Personal Life

When Dan Brown joined the National Academy of Songwriters he met Blythe Newlon. Blythe is an art historian and painter. She was the academy’s Director of Artist Development. Blythe wrote press releases, set up events, and put him in contact with people helpful for his career. They got married at Pea Porridge Pond, near Conway, New Hampshire in 1997. Both of them were supporters of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. After 21 years of marriage in 2019, Brown and his wife acrimoniously divorced with a financial settlement concluded due to Brown’s infidelity. In December 2021, they agreed to settle the lawsuit.

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