Some sources say that Browne began accepting commissions when still a student as money was in short supply at home as his father had been unwell in 1867 and was partly incapacitated by illness.

[6] Brown's first book illustrations was for The Day After the Holidays (1875), A school story by Ascott R Hope.

James Cooper, his tutor, introduced him to Blackie's, the London publishers, for whom he began to illustrate juvenile books.

Houfe says that "Browne illustrated a truly amazing quantity of boy's stories, tales and novels".

[10] Such was Browne's renown for his careful research that George Bernard Shaw, in a review of Stories of Old Renown by Ascot R. Hope said: Mr. Hope describes Guy of Warwick as unhorsed, and fighting the dragon with his sword after he has been thrown and has lost his spear.

Enormously painstaking and highly talented, he failed to equal the fame of his father only because his work appeared too widely and in cheap editions, so that he never became associated with a single significant author.

[4] Peppin and Micklethwait agree that his failure to achieve the famed of his father was due partly to him never becoming the lead illustrator for any author of note, and also because much of his vast output was published in very cheap editions.

However, they concluded that on the grounds of energy, competence, reliability, and sheer volume he must be rated among the most important illustrators of his time.

[10] Doyle concludes that: Gordon Browne's work over the years was so varied and full, so skilled, and of such a consistently high standard that praise would seem invidious.

[28] Dalby wrote Gordon Browne was one of the greatest illustrators of the Golden Age, both in terms of quality and quantity.

His sheer prolificity, averaging six books a year for nearly half a century, may have undervalued his reputation, but there is no doubt his innumerable vivid and painstakingly accurate drawings were always successful and much liked by generations of children addicted to the perennially popular classics he illustrated.

Many late Victorian writers, from Mrs Ewing to Henty and Fenn, were delighted to have their stories illustrated by this most felicitous of artists.