Dan Brown
June 22, 1964
Dan Brown is an american author of thriller books with historical elements.
"Dan Brown taught English before devoting himself entirely to his work as a writer". As the eldest of three children of Richard G. Brown, a mathematics professor at Phillips Exeter Academy and author of a mathematics textbook, and the well-known church musician Constance Gerhard, he grew up – according to the advertising in the blurbs of his books – "in an environment in which science and religion were not mutually exclusive". It is also this combination that has founded the author's worldwide success.
Illuminati, the first novel by Dan Brown published in Germany, reached the top of the bestseller list within a very short time. With his book The Da Vinci Code (german: Sacrilege), which was published in 35 countries, he became one of the most successful writers of all time. Dan Brown was married and lived in New Hampshire, New England, with his wife Blythe Newlon, an art historian from whom he later divorced, who also supported him with research on his novels.
Brown attended Phillips Exeter Academy. After graduating in 1982, he made his first extended trip to Spain before enrolling at Amherst College to major in English and Spanish, which he successfully completed in 1986. He became a member of the Amherst College Glee Club, a college men's choir, and in 1983 took part in its tour, which took place in various European cities (Vienna, Venice, Paris and Athens). There were further appearances in the US embassies of New Delhi, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong and Seoul. As part of his studies at Amherst College, he participated in a university summer program in Seville, which also included an introduction to Spanish history and culture. It was there that he allegedly first came into contact with the theory that Leonardo da Vinci had hidden secret messages in his works.
After graduating, he began a career as a singer and songwriter. With a synthesizer and used recording equipment, he taught himself to compose. The result was SynthAnimals, a cassette for children that was initially only sold in and around Exeter. In 1990, he and friends produced Perspective, an adult album released under Brown's own music label, Dalliance.
In the spring of 1991, Brown moved to Los Angeles to further his music career. He earned his living as a Spanish teacher at Beverly Hills Preparatory School. He discovered a company called the Creative Musicians Coalition (CMC), which distributed records by independent musicians nationwide via mail order. SynthAnimals was approved and was now available all over the USA.
Brown joined the National Academy of Songwriters and met Blythe Newlon, twelve years her senior, who worked at the Academy as head of the artistic development department. Blythe was convinced of his creative potential and was now committed to his progress.
Brown's debut album Dan Brown had little success, which was attributed in part to the artist's refusal to take to the stage.
Brown began working on his second album and moved back to Exeter, New Hampshire with Newlon in 1993. In 1995, the CD Angels & Demons was released. This ended his career as a singer-songwriter.
To make a living, Brown took a job as an English teacher at his former college and a second job as a Spanish teacher in Hampton Falls. Under the pseudonym Danielle Brown, Dan Brown published the slim, humorous volume 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman in 1995. The volume did not go beyond a first small edition.
Brown then began work on his first thriller, Digital Fortress (german: Diabolus), which deals with Internet security and the invasion of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA) of American citizens. In order to be able to finish the book despite his two teaching jobs, he got into the habit of sitting down at the computer at four o'clock in the morning – a habit that Brown says he has retained to this day. In June 1996, he quit both of his jobs, although at that time he had neither signed a contract for Diabolus nor found an agent.
Diabolus was published in February 1998 by Thomas Dunne Books and, like Brown's CDs, was marketed by Blythe Brown. The book was one of the first books ever to get its own website and was even available as an e-book. Because of the content of Diabolus, Brown himself was watched by the NSA for a while and his phone was tapped. In addition, he once received a summons to the NSA headquarters disguised as a "warm invitation".
Four months later, he published another humorous book under his wife's name: The Bald Book (german: The Bald Book).
After Diabolus found a publisher, Brown began research for his second thriller, Angels and Demons (german: Illuminati), which included several educational trips to Europe, which he undertook in the company of his wife. Gary Goldstein, an editor at Simon & Schuster, had taken a liking to Diabolus. So he asked Brown what he was working on. Brown then sent Goldstein the 200-page concept he had developed for Illuminati, and in return received a contract and advance for Illuminati, as well as another book. Goldstein, however, left Simon & Schuster shortly afterwards completely unexpectedly. Illuminati was "orphaned" for a few months until Jason Kaufman started as a new editor at Simon & Schuster; he was entrusted with the supervision of the two Brown books.
When Illuminati was released in April 2000, work on Brown's third thriller, Deception Point (german: Meteor), which was released in August 2001, was almost complete. Once again, Dan and Blythe Brown had to take over the promotion of the book themselves. The sales figures for all three books were limited until then. Brown broke up with Jake Elwell, his former friend and agent at Wiesner & Wiesner, and signed a contract with Heide Lange of the Sanford J. Greenburger Associates agency in New York. In order to find out what worked on the market, the three works published so far were critically questioned: Brown combed through his now very extensive archive for material he had not used before, and remembered the comments of a professor from Seville on Leonardo da Vinci. The hook for The Da Vinci Code (German: Sacrilege) was found.
With his editor Jason Kaufman, who had supervised the two books Illuminati and Meteor, Brown had meanwhile built up a stable collaboration. But now Kaufman was looking for a new job. During his job interviews, he made the signing of an employment contract conditional on Dan Brown also getting a contract with the same publisher and that Kaufman would remain Brown's editor. To emphasize his demand, Kaufman presented the 200-page concept in all conversations, which Brown had also created for Sacrilege in the tried and tested manner. Eventually, Kaufman got a job at Doubleday, which is part of the Random House publishing group, and Dan Brown got a $400,000 contract for The Da Vinci Code and another book.
In the fall of 2002, Doubleday distributed 10,000 galley proofs to booksellers, reviewers, and critics. Due to the quantities that the bookstore ordered in advance from The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday printed an initial print run of 230,000 copies. The Da Vinci Code was published on March 18, 2003, and a few days later the book reached number 1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list and remained on this list for two years without interruption. The thriller has sparked fierce controversy worldwide; the sharpest criticism came from the Catholic Church and Opus Dei due to the explosive content. To date, The Da Vinci Code has been translated into 44 languages and sold around 57 million copies worldwide (as of May 2006), although it is banned in some countries, such as Lebanon. In May 2006, the film adaptation of the work with Tom Hanks in the role of Robert Langdon was released worldwide. Since the beginning of November 2006, the film has been available on DVD (main article: The Da Vinci Code – Sacrilege).
In the meantime, Dan Brown had become one of the biggest revenue generators at Doubleday, which prompted his agent Heide Lange to renegotiate. The original contract for two books became one for four books, in which Harvard professor Robert Langdon is to act as the protagonist. After the Robert Langdon thriller Illuminati, which was published by Simon & Schuster, and The Da Vinci Code, Brown's first work published by Doubleday, the third thriller starring Robert Langdon is titled The Lost Symbol. The first English edition was published on September 15, 2009 with an initial circulation of 5 million copies. In an interview, Brown said: "It's a thematic sequel to SAKRILEG, in which Langdon becomes involved in a mysterious event on home American soil for the first time. The new novel deals with the hidden history of our American capital." The German edition followed on 14 October 2009 under the title The Lost Symbol.
Brown lets it be known that he hardly reads fiction anymore, but limits himself to non-fiction books, as he is constantly busy researching for his next project. During his student days, he was impressed by authors such as William Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, Sidney Sheldon, Robert Ludlum and Jeffrey Archer. They had a strong influence on his writing style. Brown adopted content concepts – especially in Illuminati and Sacrilege – from Robert Anton Wilson and Henry Lincoln, including above all the Holy Grail, which had already been introduced by Wilson in the Illuminati Chronicles of 1975 as a symbol of the bloodline of Christ.
On May 14, 2013, Brown's next book, Inferno, was published, which continues the series about Robert Langdon. The film adaptation was released in German cinemas on October 13, 2016. In September 2017, the next part of the series followed under the title Origin and immediately took first place at the Spiegel-Bestsellerliste.Im 2020, Brown published a picture book for children for the first time, entitled Wild Symphony, in collaboration with illustrator Susan Batori.