Grant Allen

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Standard Name: Allen, Grant
Black and white photograph of Grant Allen by Elliott and Fry. He is sitting in a chair with his legs crossed. He is wearing a dark jacket and paler striped trousers, looking down at his hands, which hold a pocket watch. He has grey hair, darker moustache and and sideburns, and a short, pointed beard.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Amy Levy
The following year the novelist Grant Allen , an opponent of higher education for women, attributed her suicide directly to her time at university. Beckman considers many possible reasons—a broken love-affair, her lesbianism, her deafness...
Family and Intimate relationships Agnes Maule Machar
Grant Allen , a prolific writer of naturalist fiction and non-fiction who was actively publishing at the same time as AMM , was her brother-in-law.
Gerson, Carole, and Agnes Maule Machar. “Introduction”. Roland Graeme, Knight, Tecumseh Press, 1996, p. vii - xxiv.
viii
He moved to England in his teens, via the...
Friends, Associates Katherine Cecil Thurston
Through the New Vagabonds Club , KCT may have met several other prominent authors of the day, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , Grant Allen , Pearl Craigie (who went by the pseudonym John Oliver...
Friends, Associates Flora Thompson
Grayshott offered more extensive opportunities. As well as offering the usual library and penny readings, it was a centre for literary celebrities. During her work in the post-office FT observed and caught snatches of the...
Intertextuality and Influence George Egerton
Pleased with the book's success, Lane introduced a fiction series named after it: Keynotes.
Stetz, Margaret. “Keynotes: A New Woman, Her Publisher, and Her Material”. Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol.
30
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 1997, pp. 89-107.
91
The series included Grant Allen 's The Woman Who Did and The British Barbarians: A Hill-Top Novel (both 1895),...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
Reviews were positive. Novelist Margaret Woods felt that the archaic world it depicted was the root of Marcella's charm.
Watters, Tamie, and Mary Augusta Ward. “Introduction”. Marcella, Virago, 1984, p. vii - xvi.
xvi
Margaret Oliphant criticised the author in Blackwood's for asking readers to surrender all our...
Literary responses Kathleen Caffyn
Her contemporary Hugh Stutfield grouped KC together with Sarah Grand and Grant Allen as members of the purity school. Gail Cunningham notes that these authors were seen to valorize a feminine ideal and sphere...
Literary responses Victoria Cross
The Athenæum's review began by asserting that if The Woman Who Didn't was intended to provide a rejoinder to Grant Allen 's novel, then it had failed to do so. Moreover, it failed more...
politics Hannah Lynch
Barine lived as a New Woman in her independence and her intellectual productivity, but her style was self-consciously feminine, and she deplored the left-wing feminism of writers like Olive Schreiner and George Egerton , whom...
Publishing B. M. Croker
In 1894 stories by BMC appeared in the Christmas numbers of London Society (along with others by John Strange Winter and Alice Perrin ) and the Graphic (along with others by Grant Allen and Robert Buchanan
Publishing Mary Angela Dickens
MAD published her story The Catch of the Season in The Strand Magazine. The issue also features writing by Arthur Conan Doyle and Grant Allen .
Dickens, Mary Angela. “The Catch of the Season”. The Strand Magazine, Vol.
xiv
, No. 79, July 1897, pp. 66-72.
66-73
Reception Ménie Muriel Dowie
MMD 's second publication after the wildly popular A Girl in the Karpathians was reasonably successful for a first novel, but its reception by the general reading public was perhaps not as enthusiastic as [the...
Textual Features Sophie Veitch
In Ethics and Art in Recent Novels, SV again fits notice of nine novels into a review which also expounds her view of literary morality, along the same lines as her fiction. She begins...
Textual Production Evelyn Sharp
Lane accepted the novel in November 1894 for his series called after George Egerton 's Keynotes.
John, Angela V. Evelyn Sharp: Rebel Woman, 1869–1955. Manchester University Press, 2009.
13
It appeared on the recommendation of Lane's readers John Davidson and Richard Le Gallienne , with Aubrey Beardsley
Textual Production Victoria Cross
VC 's pseudonym was apparently a complicated private joke, implying both that Cross believed she deserved recognition for her valour in defying conventional mores (the Victoria Cross being the highest British military award for heroism)...

Timeline

October 1889: Grant Allen's eugenicist essay Plain Words...

Building item

October 1889

Grant Allen 's eugenicist essay Plain Words on the Woman Question in the Fortnightly Review argued that every woman, especially of the middle or upper class, had a duty to produce a minimum of four children.
Allen, Grant. “Plain Words on the Woman Question”. Fortnightly Review, Vol.
52
, Oct. 1889, pp. 448-58.

February 1895: Grant Allen published his best-selling novel...

Writing climate item

February 1895

Grant Allen published his best-selling novel entitled The Woman Who Did; it was Keynotes Series no. 8.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Annie Sophie Cory
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Annie Sophie Cory

1896: Grant Allen published A Splendid Sin, which...

Writing climate item

1896

Grant Allen published A Splendid Sin, which was influenced by the psychological ideas of Henry Maudsley .
Collie, Michael. Henry Maudsley: Victorian Psychiatrist. West End House, 1988, http://HSS.
58-65
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.

June 1897: The first issue of The Adult, a periodical...

Building item

June 1897

The first issue of The Adult, a periodical from the Legitimation League , appeared: it campaigned for the rights of the illegitimate and for sex education.
McLaren, Angus. “Sex Radicalism in the Canadian Pacific Northwest 1890-1920”. American Sexual Politics: Sex, Gender and Race since the Civil War, edited by John C. Fout and Maura Shaw Tantillo, University of Chicago Press, 1993.
144
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
180

31 May 1898: George Bedborough, secretary of the Legitimation...

Building item

31 May 1898

George Bedborough , secretary of the Legitimation League which sought to change the law to improve the position of illegitimate children, was arrested, largely in an attempt to damage the League through him.
Forward, Stephanie. “A Study in Yellow: Mona Caird’s ’The Yellow Drawing-Room’”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 2, 2000, pp. 295-07.
298

Texts

Allen, Grant. “Plain Words on the Woman Question”. Fortnightly Review, Vol.
52
, pp. 448-58.
Allen, Grant. The Woman Who Did. John Lane, 1895.