Statue of Sir Thomas Browne, Hay Hill, Norwich

Sir Thomas Browne, was a 17th Century polymath who wrote works on medicine, religion, science and the esoteric.

He was interested in the natural world and the scientific revolution. A literary craftsman and stylist, his writings are permeated with classical and biblical references. He had great influence of writers down the centuries, admired or quoted from by Johnson, Coleridge, Poe, Melville, R D Laing, Armistead Maupn, Borges and Virginia Woolf.

His most famous was perhaps Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial or a Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk occasioned by the discovery of some bronze age burials in earthenware vessels, which led him to meditate on the fleetingness of earthly fame and reputation.

Browne was the son of silk merchant in Cheapside London, sent to school at Winchester College and Pembroke College Oxford. He studied medicine on the Continent and settled in Norwich in 1637, where he practised medicine and lived until his death in 1682.

Browne sent a short autobiography to John Aubrey, for Aubrey's collection of Brief Lives:

This statue of 1905, is in Hay Hill, Norwich, near the site of Browne's house, and with St Peter Mancroft Church in the background, is by Henry Pegram.