Background

Hervey Allen was born on December 8, 1889 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States and christened William Hervey Allen Jr. He was the eldest of the three sons and two daughters of William Hervey Allen, the inventor of an automatic stoker for blast furnaces, and Helen Eby (Myers) Allen. His paternal grandparents, Edward Jay Allen and Elizabeth (Robinson) Allen, were of western Pennsylvania pioneer stock and English descent.

Education

Allen received his early education in Pittsburgh schools and entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1909. Two years later he withdrew because of injuries sustained in athletics, though he once told an interviewer, Robert van Gelder, probably in jest, that he was "kicked out. " In 1915 he received the Bachelor of Science degree with honors from the University of Pittsburgh.

Career

Allen enlisted in the Pennsylvania National Guard in 1915 and served with an infantry company on the Mexican border. Although he had been writing poetry for some time, none had had the success of the pamphlets he published during these years, Ballads of the Border (1916), which sold very well on nearby college campuses.

During World War I, he was a first lieutenant in the 111th Infantry, 28th Division, A. E. F. Wounded during the battle for a bridgehead at Fismes, he afterward took part in the attack on Montfaucon in the Meuse-Argonne drive.

After a period of graduate study at Harvard in 1920, Allen settled in Charleston, South Carolina, where he taught English in a high school and became a close friend of DuBose Heyward. He and Heyward founded the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and collaborated on a book of poems about the legends of Charleston, Carolina Chansons (1922). Earlier Allen had published Wampum and Old Gold (1921), containing probably his best known poem, "The Blind Man, " a somber war ballad; Blind Man was published separately in 1923.

Allen was a member of the department of English at Columbia University (1925-1926), lectured on American literature at Vassar (1926-1927), and for a number of years after 1929 he lectured on poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, Vermont.

In 1933 Allen published Anthony Adverse, a historical novel he had worked on for five years while living in Bermuda. The novel is "a throw-back to the ancient and honorable picaresque tradition, tracing a handsome hero through the wars and bedrooms of the Napoleonic era in 1, 224 pages of expertly-tailored prose, " said literary historian Russel B. Nye. The book was significant as the first in a number of long, adventure-packed historical novels highly popular in the United States through the period that saw Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (1936) and Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber (1944). Allen's treatment of sexual themes was advanced for the times. In an article, "The Sources of Anthony Adverse, " in the Saturday Review of Literature (January 13, 1934), Allen replied heatedly to accusations that he had misused historical source material.

With royalties from Anthony Adverse, Allen bought Bonfield Manor, an estate on the eastern shore of Maryland, near the village of Oxford. His next novel, Action at Aquila (1938), a Civil War story, narrated the adventures of Colonel Nathaniel Franklin of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The book, which lacked the flamboyance and complexity of Anthony Adverse, failed to repeat that great popular success, as did It Was Like This (1940), composed of two starkly realistic war stories about the Western Front during the summer of 1918.

In World War II, he worked with the War Manpower Commission. From 1943 until his death, he edited, with Carl Carmer, the Rivers of America series. He was on the original staff of the Saturday Review of Literature. Allen served on the board of governors of St. John's College, Annapolis, and as a trustee of the University of Miami and Cazenovia (New York) Junior College.

Allen also began a projected five-volume series of novels about Colonial America, with an eighteenth-century protagonist, Salathiel Albine, a soldier and adventurer on the western Pennsylvania frontier. The complete series was to be called The Disinherited. Three volumes were published. The author was working on the fourth volume, City in the Dawn (1950), when he died of a heart attack at his home, The Glades Estate, Miami, Florida. He was buried in the National Cemetery at Arlington with full military rites.

Achievements

• Allen's claim to lasting recognition as a man of letters may ultimately rest upon his biography of Poe, rather than his poetry and novels, skillfully written and popular as the latter were. His novel Anthony Adverse was one of the best selling historical novels of all times, sold 395, 000 copies the first year (in the midst of the depression), and was eventually translated into eighteen foreign languages. By 1968 total sales were nearly 3, 000, 000. His Toward the Flame: A War Diary was described by the critic Herbert F. West as "one the best books on World War I. " Allen's most important work of nonfiction is the two-volume, enormously detailed biography Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allen Poe (1926). The work, an impressive contribution to American literary biography, was praised by most reviewers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Toward the Flame: A Memoir of World War I

    ( Considered by many to be the finest American combat mem...)

  • Anthony Adverse, Volume Two, The Other Bronze Boy

    ("What a project, and what a book! A work that took four y...)

  • Wampum and Old Gold (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Wampum and Old Gold Autumn Invocation Dream...)

  • Carolina Chansons

    (DuBose Heyward (1885 -1940) was an American author best k...)

  • The City in the Dawn: The Forest and the Fort, Bedford Village & Toward the Morning

    (A monumental series of Colonial life in one volume. Arran...)

  • The Forest and the Fort

    (First edition bound in beige cloth. A Very Good copy in a...)

  • Action at Aquila
  • Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe

    (Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Early edition, bu...)

  • It was like this: Two stories of the great war

Religion

Allen was affiliated with the Episcopal church.

Politics

Allen characterized himself as a "Jeffersonian democrat. "

Views

Quotations: "Religions change; beer and wine remain. "

"Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded. "

"Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages. "

"Southward, two mighty ranges of the Appalachians shouldered their way into the blue distance like tremendous caravans marching across eternity. "

"Some of the shells brought my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be blown to pieces. "

Membership

Allen was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.

Personality

Allen was an energetic and prolific writer, and he characterized himself as a "methodical person, " who wrote slowly "a few paragraphs a day. " Allen was portrayed by an acquaintance as "a six feet, four inches tall, florid, blond man, partly bald, who resembles an English country gentleman. "

Connections

He married Annette Hyde Andrews, the daughter of Charles W. Andrews, a Syracuse attorney, on June 30, 1927, at Cazenovia, New York. She attended Allen's lectures while a student at Vassar. They had three children: Marcia Andrews, Mary Ann, and Richard Francis.

Father:

William Hervey Allen

Mother:

Helen Eby (Myers) Allen

Spouse:

Annette Hyde (Andrews) Allen

Brother:

Edward Jay Allen

Brother:

Winthrop Myers Allen

Sister:

Elizabeth (Allen) Baylies

Sister:

Helen Mar Allen

Daughter:

Marcia Andrews Allen

Daughter:

Mary Ann Allen

Son:

Richard Francis Allen

References

• Who Was Who in American History, the Military