Grant Allen

Grant Allen (February 24, 1848 - October 25, 1899) was a scientific writer and novelist; an able upholder of the evolution doctrine and an expounder of Darwinism.

Born Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, the son of an English emigrant Protestant minister. He studied in England and France and in his mid twenties became a professor at Queens College in Jamaica.

Despite his religious father, Allen became an agnostic and a socialist. After leaving his professorship, in 1876 he returned to England where he turned his talents to writing, gaining a reputation for his essays on science and for literary works.

His first books were on scientific subjects, and include Physiological Æsthetics (1877) and Flowers and Their Pedigrees. After assisting Sir W.W. Hunter in his Gazeteer of India, he turned his attention to fiction, and between 1884 and 1899 produced about 30 novels In 1895, his scandalous book titled The Woman Who Did became a bestseller. The book told the story of an independent woman who has a child out of wedlock.

Grant Allen died at his home on Hindhead, Haslemere, Surrey, England on October 25, 1899.

Partial bibliography

• Philistia - (1884)
• The Devil's Die - (1888)
• The White Man's Foot - (1888)
• The Great Taboo - (1891)
• The British Barbarians - (1895)
• The Woman Who Did - (1895)
• The Evolution of the Idea of God - (1897)

Reference

• Barbara Arnett Melchiori , Grant Allen: The Downward Path which Leads to Fiction (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2000), ISBN 88-8319-526-4

External link

• eTexts of Allen's works, at Project Gutenberg
• The Grant Allen Website