Hugh Brewster’s Followers (32)

Hugh Brewster

Website

http://www.hughbrewster.com/

Genre

History

edit data

Being able to create books about history is a dream job for me since I’ve always been enthralled by history. When I was growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, our house was just around the corner from the town library. And I haunted its children’s section—reading sometimes four or five books a week. Historical fiction titles by writers like Geoffrey Trease and Rosemary Sutcliffe were particular favourites. I still treasure a copy of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages that I was given as a prize in a library reading contest in 1960.

Since ours was the only house in the neighbourhoood without a TV antenna on the roof, reading was my primary form of entertainment. My parents thought their four children would read more without a television t Being able to create books about history is a dream job for me since I’ve always been enthralled by history. When I was growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, our house was just around the corner from the town library. And I haunted its children’s section—reading sometimes four or five books a week. Historical fiction titles by writers like Geoffrey Trease and Rosemary Sutcliffe were particular favourites. I still treasure a copy of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages that I was given as a prize in a library reading contest in 1960.

Since ours was the only house in the neighbourhoood without a TV antenna on the roof, reading was my primary form of entertainment. My parents thought their four children would read more without a television to distract us. And they were right, we did — though we also showed up at our friends’ houses whenever our favourite shows were on!

Our family had moved to Georgetown from a small town in Scotland in 1956, when I was six years old. When I was thirteen we moved to Guelph, Ontario, and I went to high school and university there. My first real job after graduating with an English degree in 1971 was with Scholastic – then a fairly new publishing company in Canada. As an editor for Scholastic Inc. from 1972 to 1984 in both Toronto and New York, I was involved in the creation of Scholastic’s Canadian children’s publishing program as well as in the selecting of books for Scholastic’s school book clubs. (One of our early discoveries was the teenaged author Gordon Korman and his Bruno and Boots books.)

Between 1984 and 2004 I was the Editorial Director and Publisher of Madison Press Books in Toronto. While there, I helped to create a number of successful books for both adults and young readers including Robert Ballard’s The Discovery the Titanic, that has sold over 1.5 million copies, and TITANIC: An Illustrated History a book that provided inspiration for James Cameron’s epic movie. Among the award-winning children’s books that I edited and compiled are: Polar the Titanic Bear, On Board the Titanic, First to Fly, and Journey to Ellis Island.

The first children’s book that I actually both wrote and compiled was Anastasia’s Album: The Last Tsar’s Youngest Daughter Tells Her Own Story, which was published in 1996 and won a number of awards. In 1997 I wrote the text for Inside the Titanic, which featured amazing cutaway illustrations by Ken Marschall. The next year, with Laurie Coulter, I compiled a book filled with fascinating facts about the Titanic entitled 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic. Laurie and I went on to write To Be A Princess in 2001 which was a Silver Birch and Red Cedar nominee. In 2004, the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I wrote On Juno Beach which won the Children’s Literature of Canada Information Book Award in 2005. The success of that book encouraged me to write At Vimy Ridge which appeared in 2007 and won the Norma Fleck Award in 2008.

In 2005, I decided to devote myself to writing full-time and have produced seven books since then: The Other Mozart: The Life of the Famous Chevalier de Saint George published Fall 2006; Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose: The Story of a Painting and Breakout Dinosaurs. DIEPPE: Canada’s Darkest Day of World War II was released in 2009 and was followed by the novel Prisoner of Dieppe in Scholastic’s new I Am Canada series. A second novel, Deadly Voyage appeared in Fall ’11 and for the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, I produced a large adult book entitled Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage in Spring 2012. ...more

16 posts
Hugh Brewster's Blog

Hugh Brewster isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.

A World War I Performance For the Elora Festival

This summer I’ll be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I with a concert performance on July 19th at the Elora Festival. Canada, Fall In! The Great War Remembered in Words, Images and Song will tell … Continue reading →

View more on Hugh Brewster's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 09, 2014 06:45

View all 16 posts »

Combine Editions
Hugh Brewster’s books

Average rating: 4.09 · 5,567 ratings · 597 reviews · 24 distinct works • Similar authors

	Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World 3.97 avg rating — 2,782 ratings — published 2012 — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Anastasia's Album: The Last Tsar's Youngest Daughter Tells Her Own Story 4.20 avg rating — 916 ratings — published 1996 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic by Hugh Brewster, Hugh Brewster, Laurie Coulter 4.36 avg rating — 753 ratings — published 1998 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Inside the Titanic: A Giant Cutaway Book by Hugh Brewster, Ken Marschall (Illustrator) 4.33 avg rating — 364 ratings — published 1997 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Prisoner of Dieppe: World War II, Alistair Morrison, Occupied France, 1942 4.11 avg rating — 217 ratings — published 2010 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Deadly Voyage: RMS Titanic, Jamie Laidlaw, April 14, 1912 3.96 avg rating — 139 ratings — published 2011 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses by Hugh Brewster, Laurie Coulter, Laurie McGaw (Illustrator) 3.99 avg rating — 136 ratings — published 2001 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose: The Story of a Painting 4.25 avg rating — 55 ratings — published 2007 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Other Mozart: The Life of the Chevalier Saint-George by Hugh Brewster, Eric Velásquez (Illustrations) 4.21 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 2006 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dieppe: Canada's Darkest Day of World War II 4.07 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 2009 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Hugh Brewster…

Quotes by Hugh Brewster (?)

“So far, none of the six lifeboats that had left the Titanic had been filled to capacity, and none had carried any second- or third-class passengers. Second-class passengers had been told to board from their own promenade area farther aft on the boat deck. Crowds of steerage passengers, meanwhile, were waiting patiently in the well decks, while others sat in the third-class general and smoking rooms, chatting and playing cards. The gates leading up from the aft well deck had been locked to prevent men from third class from going up to the boats. But a number of them had climbed onto the large round bases of the two cargo cranes and were clambering along the arms of the cranes into second class.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

0 likes

“While the Duff Gordons drank champagne at the Ritz that Thursday night, Margaret Brown was still on the Carpathia, helping out with the steerage passengers. Immigration and health officials had come on board to spare the Titanic’s third-class survivors the customary hiatus at Ellis Island, but it was after eleven o’clock before the first of them began to leave the ship. Still wearing the black velvet suit she had donned after the collision, “Queen Margaret,” as some in first class had dubbed her, worked to organize the disembarkation of the steerage women and help with their travel arrangements. The Countess of Rothes was doing likewise, and one passenger of particular concern for her was Rhoda Abbott, who was unable to walk due to her ordeal in Collapsible A. Although Rhoda assured the countess and Margaret Brown that she would be looked after by the Salvation Army, she was transferred by ambulance to New York Hospital at Noëlle’s expense and later to a hotel room that Mrs. Brown arranged for her. The small, slim countess eventually walked down the gangway and into the arms of her husband Norman, the Earl of Rothes, and before long, she, too, was in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. But Margaret Brown remained on the ship, where she improvised beds in the lounge for the remaining steerage women and spent the night with them. The next day her brother, who had come from Denver to greet her, came on board and told Margaret that her ailing grandson—the reason she had come home on the Titanic—was recovering well. This encouraged her to stay in New York, where she set up headquarters for the Titanic Survivors’ Committee in her suite at the Ritz-Carlton.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

0 likes

“Chivalrous or not, there was no denying that of the 1,667 men on board, only 338, or 20.27 percent, had survived as compared with a 74.35 percent survival rate for the 425 women. On April 21 the bodies of the Titanic’s victims began to be pulled out of the north Atlantic by the Mackay-Bennett, a cable ship that had been sent out from Halifax with a hundred tons of ice and 125 coffins on board. The Mackay-Bennett’s captain described the scene as resembling “a flock of sea gulls resting on the water.… All we could see at first would be the top of the life preservers. They were all floating face upwards, apparently standing in the water.” John Jacob Astor’s body was found floating with arms outstretched, his gold pocket watch dangling from its platinum chain. To the ship’s undertaker it looked as if Astor had just glanced at his watch before he took the plunge. It is often written that Astor’s body was found mangled and soot-covered and that he must therefore have been crushed when the forward funnel came down. Yet according to three eyewitnesses, Astor’s body was in good condition and soot-free, and like most of the other floating victims, he appeared to have died of hypothermia. On April 25 the body of the Buffalo architect Edward Kent was recovered. In the pocket of his gray overcoat was the silver flask and ivory miniature given to him by Helen Candee on the grand staircase, and these were later returned to her by Kent’s sister. Frank Millet’s body was found on the same day and identified by the initials F. D. M. on his gold watch. The next evening the Mackay-Bennett left for Halifax with 190 bodies on board, another 116 having been buried at sea. A second ship, the Minia, had arrived on the scene, but after a week’s search it retrieved only seventeen bodies, and two other ships would find only an additional five. The Mackay-Bennett landed in Halifax on April 30 to the tolling of church bells and flags flying at half-staff. Horse-drawn hearses took the bodies from the dock to a temporary morgue set up in a curling rink.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

0 likes

See all Hugh Brewster's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The History Book ...: KAROLYN'S 50 BOOKS IN 2012	39	75	Jul 20, 2012 07:59AM
The History Book ...: MARY KRISTINE'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2012	61	90	Aug 06, 2012 03:52PM
Toronto: Great Toronto Based Authors	4	48	Oct 12, 2014 11:14PM
The History Book ...: JILL'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2015	160	212	Dec 29, 2015 09:29AM

More…

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Hugh to Goodreads.

Hugh Brewster’s Followers (32)

Hugh Brewster

16 postsHugh Brewster's Blog

A World War I Performance For the Elora Festival

Combine EditionsHugh Brewster’s books

Topics Mentioning This Author

16 posts
Hugh Brewster's Blog

Combine Editions
Hugh Brewster’s books