Allen, Grant (1848-1899), writer

One autograph letter, signed, apparently to the editor of the Nineteenth Century, offering an article for publication and mentioning others (including on evolution and related concepts) that he could also offer.

1879

1 file (1 item)

Purchased from: Sotheby's, London, April 1928 (acc.48104).

(Charles) Grant Blairfindie Allen (1848-1899), who wrote under the name Grant Allen, was born in Ontario, Canada, of Irish Protestant stock, and spent his childhood there: his adolescent years were spent in Connecticut (U.S.A.), in France and in finally in the United Kingdom at Birmingham. He was educated at Merton College, Oxford, in the course of his studies marrying Caroline Anne Bootheway (1846-1872), who was an invalid and died shortly after Allen graduated in 1871. Subsequently Allen worked as a schoolteacher. In 1873 he married Ellen Jerrard (1851-1936), and also took up a post as professor of mental and moral philosophy at a college, founded by the government for the education of native peoples, at Spanish Town in Jamaica. The college closed in 1876 and Allen returned to the United Kingdom, from now on living as a professional writer. He produced popular articles and books on science (evolution being a frequent theme) and, from 1878, fiction, the latter often drawing on topical themes such as the emancipation of women. This last was the subject of his most famous, and at the time notorious, work: the novel The Woman Who Did (1895). It tells the story of Herminia Barton, a graduate of Girton College who falls in love with Alan Merrick but objects to marriage on the grounds of female emancipation, cohabiting with him and bearing him a child; the scandal around it established the "new woman" as a popular subject for fiction and inspired several novels written in direct response or rebuttal. Allen died of liver cancer in 1899.