Grant Blairfindie Allen was born in 1848 in Ontario, Canada, of Celtic and French extraction. He graduated from Merton College, Oxford in 1871. After teaching in a Jamaican college he returned to England in 1876 where he began to write for a living. Although he felt his monograph on physics, Force and Energy, A Theory of Dynamics (1888) to be his “main contribution to human thought”, he was better known for what critics called his “pseudoscience”. Despite his deep antagonism to Grub Street conditions, the success of his career lay as a populariser of evolutionary and sociological thought. He presented this in a prolific output of chatty but informed articles on natural history, culture and travel, and, after 18

This article in full comprises 239 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 28 October 2000

Citation: Randolph, Lyssa. "Grant Allen". The Literary Encyclopedia. 28 October 2000.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=84, accessed 21 November 2009.]