GRANT ALLEN

 

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen
Miscellaneous Writer

Born 'Alwington', Kingston, Ontario, Canada 24 February 1848

Died Hindhead, Surrey, UK 25 October 1899


 

'Naturalist, anthropologist, physicist, historian, poet, novelist, essayist, critic -- what place is to be assigned to this versatile, well-equipped worker? Time . . . will alone determine what, if any, of Allen's writings will survive.' (Edward Clodd, Grant Allen: A Memoir [1900])

'He could be described with more 'ists' than anyone else I ever saw. He was an atheist and pacifist and socialist, a botanist and zoologist and optimist, a chemist and physicist, a scientist of scientists, a monist, meliorist and hedonist . . . . A walk with him was an education in botany and zoology, and he had no whimsies or quirks; he was always reasonable, good-tempered, vivacious, bright, and interested in every human interest. . . .He was, also, astonishingly articulate; a super-journalist; he wrote excellent prose, and could turn you out a first-rate article on almost any subject from the growth of the idea of God to the habits of the caterpillar, at a moment's notice, and without perceptible exertion. I used to say his typewriter disturbed no one, for it went in one long even click.' (Frank Harris, 'Grant Allen')

 'a rare literary gift exercising itself not merely with expository skill, but also artistically, upon difficult new material. More than clearness of statement was needed. Some of the dullest of writers are as clear as they are dry. Grant Allen's individual clearness came of imagination, as his charm came of an illustrative fancy, and a gay humanity applied to subjects . . . . What an amazing talker he was! No pose-talk, but talk easily born of his knowledge and love of the subject that at the moment occupied him. No more brilliant generaliser can ever have lived. Present him with the most unexpected fact, or the most complex set of circumstances (as it might seem to you), and he had his theory in an instant, and was making it as clear, by the aid of his marvellously copious and exact vocabulary, as though he had drawn it on the air.'

(Richard Le Gallienne, 'Grant Allen').

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________      

'Mr Grant Allen was a great talker, and he would sit up, quite late at night, in the beautiful house he had built at Hindhead, eating endless biscuits out of a tin and discoursing on every topic, including politics, sex, and botany. It was literally impossible to get a word in. After we had left, we heard that he had remarked: "The Miss Hepworth Dixons would be such charming girls, if only they didn't talk so much!"'
(Ella Hepworth Dixon, As I Knew Them, 1930).

 

The BIBLIOGRAPHY of Grant Allen is now divided into two parts. Most of the important entries in both parts are annotated. The bibliography confirms Allen's almost incredible productivity during a career that lasted barely 22 years. My rough estimate is that these bibliographies understate Allen's actual output of writing by about 15%, as most of his reviewing work is lost forever, and other new items are still turning up regularly. It is his range of interests, his versatility, which marks him out distinctively from other Victorian athletes of the pen.

 

 

NON FICTION: Now brought up to date to DEC 06.

 FICTION: Also brought up to date to DEC 06. My bibliographic monograph Grant Allen: Victorian Fiction Research Guide #31 (Brisbane: Victorian Fiction Research Unit, University of Queensland, 2002), ISBN 1-86499-5866, contains an introduction to GA's fiction followed by most of the contents of this section. However, it is already out of date: this site is now the fullest source of information.

 

There is also a complete check-list, based on the above, listing the first publication only of all of Allen's work, arranged in chronological order.

 

Both sections contain a list of unresolved problems, and I would very much like to hear from anyone who can resolve any of those, or provide any clues. According to the Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals 1800-1900, 15 (People Index A-D), Grant Allen’s work appeared in the following publications from which few or no items figures in these bibliographies:

 

Album (1896-6)

Daily News (1846-1912)

Daily Despatch (1955-1960)

Daily News and Leader (1912-1928)

Daily News and Westminster Gazette (1928-1930)

English Illustrated (1888-1890)

Erasmic Annual (1898)

Fortnightly (1924-1954)

Globe

News Chronicle (1930-1955)

Outlook, for Men and Women (1929)

Outlook in Politics, Life, Letters (1898-1928)

Plain English (1914-1922)

Review of the Week (1899-1901)

West End (1897)

West-End: an Illustrated Weekly (1899)

West End Review: a Monthly Illustrated (1897-99)

World Review (1936-1953)

 

Any information about these contributions will be most welcome.

 

ALSO ON THIS SITE: 


THE NEW DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY: A WARNING

The article in the print version of the new Oxford DNB used the original article by J.S. Cotton, an old friend of Allen's. It’s a pity they didn’t leave it alone, for they allowed it to be 'updated' by a Rosemary Van Arsdel and the new article contains numerous factual errors. It is most unfortunate that these errors appear in a reference work likely to be used for many decades. However, after protests to the DNB editors, the article on GA in the regularly-updated digital version of the DNB is being corrected from October 2005. Nothing, of course, can be done about the print version. Among the errors are the following: 

1. "Joseph Antisell Allen … emigrated to Canada in 1840".  The exact date of J.A. Allen's emigration is unknown. (Contemporary accounts give different dates.) It must have been in the early 1840s but this precision is misleading. 

2. "[GA's] marriage, at the age of twenty, to Caroline Ann Bootheway (b.1844/5)." Caroline Bootheway was not born in either 1844 or 1845. She was born on 19 February 1846 and christened on 17 August 1846, at Loughborough, Leicestershire.  (I have a copy of the latter certificate). In the national census of 1851, the entry supplied by her father as householder gives her age then as five, which is correct.

 

3. "Allen married Ellen (b.1852/3), the youngest daughter of Thomas Jerrard". Ellen (Nellie) Jerrard was not born in either 1852 or 1853. She was christened at or soon after her birth, on 20 May 1851. She married on the same day in 1871, when her age on the certificate is correctly given as 20. 

 

4. "[From 1877 Grant Allen] began to publish popular scientific articles, always with an evolutionary moral". This is false. As the bibliographies on this site prove, by no means all of GA's early scientific articles deal in any way with evolution or any moral arising from it. Some are on aesthetics, nutrition and digestion, and, most importantly, on various aspects of linguistics and the history of English nomenclature.

 

5. "During 1884 Allen began to contribute short stories to such periodicals as …"  Allen did not "begin" his short-fiction career in 1884, or anywhere close to it. Apart from some juvenilia published earlier still, his first short story was published in July 1878, in the Belgravia magazine.

 

6. "In All Shades (1886), set in Jamaica…"  This novel is not set in Jamaica. It is set in Trinidad. This is important because GA had lived in Jamaica and deliberately changed the setting, almost certainly to avoid any risk of libel. 

7. "Allen wrote two novels in direct response (The Woman Who Didn't, 1895, and The Woman Who Wouldn't (1895), and the notoriety of The Woman Who Did helped establish the 'new woman' novel as a genre." The first part of this is utterly absurd. Grant Allen was a versatile writer, but his skills did not extend as far as writing 'answers' to his own novels!  The Woman Who Didn't was published by John Lane in 1895, and is by 'Victoria Cross(e)', real name Annie Sophie 'Vivian' Corey Griffin. Apart from its catchpenny title, it has no relation to Grant Allen's novel at all.  The Woman Who Wouldn't is by 'Lucas Cleve', real name Adeline Georgina Isabella Kingscote, and was published by Simpkin and Marshall in 1895.  

8. "when [Force and Energy] passed into the remainder market in 1894, he presented a copy to a friend…" This is wrong. The book was published late in 1888, and was crucified by the critics over the next two months. Not long after, in March 1889, Grant Allen himself wrote that his publisher had told him that all the (several hundred) unsold copies were being "converted into wallpaper," ie pulped. There would have been no unsold copies left by 1894 and in any case, it is questionable whether there was any such thing as a "remainder market," as we know it, for books in the 1890s. The copy GA gave as a present with an inscription was his own copy.  

9. "In 1892 … he built himself a cottage which he called The Croft".  If one thinks of a 'cottage' as a rural worker's small house, this is pretty misleading. The Croft (which still stands near Hindhead) was and is a very handsome, double-fronted detached villa with at least five bedrooms in Allen's time, originally surrounded by rolling lawns and several acres of land. Its size and internal arrangements are described in a letter from GA to Conan Doyle, who thought of renting it. 

GRANT ALLEN PHOTO GALLERY

1.   Earliest known photo of GA, aged 23, discovered at Brighton College, where he worked briefly in 1871. He is at the rear of the group.

2.   The porch of 'The Nook', Dorking. GA's home in the 1880s. It stands in the grounds of a hospital, completely derelict.

3.     GA's house at 22 Bonchurch Road, Ladbroke Grove, where he lived in 1878-9 while working as a journalist.

4.      Trinity Church, Wolfe Island, Ontario, where Allen's father's parish was located. GA spent much of his childhood on the island.

5.      Alwington House, Kingston, Ontario, from the front: the home of the Grant/Allen families. (Now destroyed.)

6.      Merton College, Oxford: the undergraduates in 1870. GA is probably not in this photo as he suspended his studies that year; however, the figure in the centre at the back does look rather like Photo #1. By and large, these undergraduates look rather more raffish than studious, which accords with the reputation of Merton in the 70s -- and the reminiscences of graduates later.

7.      The High Street of Dorking, Surrey, where GA lived for about 12 years.

8.      The refectory of the Imperial College at Dieppe, which GA attended. Also an exterior view with the pupils leaving, and a classroom scene. (Judging by the clothes, all the photos were probably taken c.1890-1900).

   The French school which GA attended as a youth, before going to King Edward's School, Birmingham. His parents enrolled him here during their 'grand tour'.



 

OTHER GRANT ALLEN LINKS

o       The late Chris Willis's Grant Allen site http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/grantallen.htm has numerous other links and materials, especially on GA's detective fiction.

o       William Sharp ('Fiona Mcleod') walks over from George Meredith's house to visit GA at 'The Nook' on a Sunday morning.

o       The largest collection of GA primary materials -- all fully itemised & described -- is at Pennsylvania State University Library.

o       A full online version of Edward Clodd's memoir Grant Allen (1900) is available.

o       Fourteen of GA's articles (page images) from the Cornhill and the Fortnightly on science, empire & women are online at this U. Minnesota site.

 

 

NEW BOOKS

The collection of essays on Grant Allen is now published: Grant Allen: Literature and Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siecle, edited by William Greenslade and Terence Rodgers. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

 

My study of Grant Allen and the freelance writers' milieu is published by Palgrave-Macmillan NY. See http://www.palgrave.com/products/Catalogue.aspx?is=1403966265. Reviewers have been kind enough to describe it as a “beautifully-written biography [which] throws a brilliant new light on the entire literary-cultural scene of late nineteenth-century England” and “by any standards a  distinguished contribution to late Victorian studies”. 

 

This book was recently awarded the inaugural Robert Colby Scholarly Book Prize for "a work published in the preceding year which has made a significant contribution to the study of nineteenth-century periodicals". The prize is administered by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and was awarded in New York at the CUNY Graduate Centre in September 2006.     

 

 

'The Busiest Man in England': Grant Allen and the Writing Trade, 1875-1900

 



Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: 'The Most Hateful of Professions'?
Chapter 1: Canada & Oxford, 1848-1873
Chapter 2: Jamaica, 1873-1876
Chapter 3: Setting Out the Stall, 1876-1880
Chapter 4: 'A Pedlar Crying Stuff': Selling the Wares, 1880-1889
Chapter 5: The Stock in Trade: Writing Science
Chapter 6: The Stock in Trade: Light Fiction
Chapter 7: The Prosperous Tradesman, 1890-1895
Chapter 8: Dealing with the 'Dissenting Grocer'
Chapter 9: Retailing The Woman Who Did
Chapter 10: Last Orders, 1896-1899
Conclusion: 'We of the Proletariate'
References and Bibliographical Notes
Index


BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SOUGHT

 

Any information about Allen, particularly about source materials, or members of his family, will be welcome. I would like to hear from any relatives of GA's son and only child, Jerrard Grant Allen (born July 1878), a theatrical agent/manager. He married (c.1903) a comedienne, Violet Englefield (born c.1880), the daughter of a bandmaster. She played, for instance, in a musical The Girl Behind the Counter, at Wyndham's Theatre on 21 April 1906. There is another picture of her on this site. They had a son, Reggie (Reginald Grant Allen), born 22 February 1910.

 


Violet Englefield, c.1910. 

From a private photo album.

Used by permission of June Green.


In March 1904 Jerrard Allen and Leonard Buttress, a London stage manager, published an article in Pearson's Magazine (US) called "Bird Babies".

 

On 1 Oct 1916 Jerrard and Violet Allen left Liverpool on the Cameronia for New York. Their son did not leave England until 27 Jan 1917. His ship, the St. Paul, did not arrive until 5 Feb, three days late, which must have caused anxiety in the wartime conditions.

 

By 1920 the Allen family were living at 119 E. 82nd St, New York. Jerrard Allen was listed as 41, Violet 36 and Reggie 15. Violet Englefield played in a Broadway musical, Sky High, in March 1925 but retired from the stage that year. In 1930 the family was living at 186 Gregory Boulevard, Norwalk, Connecticut. The senior Allens were registered US citizens by this date. Jerrard was listed as a 'publicity director' and his son as a 'manager'. In 1938 Jerrard was a promoter of Eva Le Gallienne's Repertory Theatre. She was the daughter of GA's intimate friend Richard Le Gallienne.

 

Around 1939 Jerrard and Violet retired to Lake Worth, Florida. Violet died in West Palm Beach on 22 Mar 1946 and Jerrard in Palm Beach in March 1964. Reggie died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 19 March 1985.

 

Grant Allen had six siblings: five sisters and an elder brother who predeceased him. His sisters were Mary Gertrude (unmarried; 1854-1897) and Carolina (Mrs John Maule Muchar), both of Kingston; Edith Harriet (unmarried, lived in Scotland); Dora Maud Violet (Mrs Robert Arklay Fergusson of Ethiebeaton, Scotland); and Frederica Blanche (Mrs Henry Rushton Fairclough, d.1927). Henry Fairclough was a Classics academic at Stanford University, author of an autobiography Warming Both Hands, but it contains little of interest on GA or his family. Any information on GA memorabilia held by relatives of these people will be welcome.

 

Thanks to the Pennsylvania State University Special Collections Library and to several others for generously supplying photos. Many thanks also to Victor Berch of Brandeis University who recovered all the details here of the Allens' lives in America.

 

CONTACT: Peter.Morton at flinders.edu.au

 

Update  23 Feb 2007