Emeritus Professor Chris Browne is a retired medical researcher and academic who was born in Hampshire in England. He spent much of his childhood in British colonial Africa and the Middle East, before returning to the UK to attend school. Following degrees from the Universities of York and Oxford, followed by five years in medical research at McGill University in Montreal in the late 1970s, he has spent most of his working life in the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University.

Chris enjoyed reading from an early age, and became a serious book collector in 1970, and has put together a personal library of around 15,000 books. His main interests are English literature and juvenilia from 1780 to 1940, fine illustrated books and the history of English publishing and printing. He particularly collects books by and about Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, amongst too many others.

In the last 20 years, Chris has also collected French books and prints, particularly French fashion prints and magazines, French editions of English literature, illustrated French books, and books about the history and culture of Paris.

Since 2016, he has been the Program Director of Melbourne Rare Book Week. Unsurprisingly, his main hobby is reading, although his collecting habit also encompasses Fine Art, French Art Deco glass and pre-WW2 fashion prints.