Grant Allen

 

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (1848-99) was one of the most prolific authors of the Victorian age. Born in Canada, he lived in the USA and France before taking up a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford in 1867. A tragically brief early marriage cut short his Oxford career, academic fellowships only being open to single men at this time. However, in 1873 he was offered a chair of philosophy at the newly founded Government College in Jamaica. Unfortunately, the college ran into difficulties and Allen returned to the UK in 1876, aiming to make his living as a writer.

Although his early publications were mainly technical and scientific, Allen found fiction to be more lucrative. In 1884 he published a volume of short stories and a novel, Philistia. Both were successful and over the next 15 years Allen went on to publish some 30 works of fiction, as well as articles and books of social commentary. He remarried and settled in Kent. His writing career soon proved lucrative enough for him and his wife to spend every winter in the South of France.

Allen wrote in many popular genres. An African Millionaire is a humourous crime story, recounting the exploits of a skilled and inventive con-man. Miss Cayley's Adventures and Hilda Wade feature two early female detectives. In the 1890s he became notorious as author of The Woman Who Did (recently republished by Oxford University Press), the story of a woman who refuses to marry her lover because she feels that the marriage laws are unfair to women. Oddly, Allen dedicated the novel to his wife.

Allen was a close friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who collaborated with him on the serial Hilda Wade. On his deathbed, Allen asked Conan Doyle to finish the last episode for him. Ironically, this episode is entitled "The Dead Man Who Spoke".

Full details of Allen's works are given in Peter Morton's wonderful on-line bibliography and in Barbara Arnett Melchiori's new study: Grant Allen: The Downward Path Which Leads to Fiction. Some of Allen's work is now being republished by Elibron.

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