Background
Paul Allen was born on February 15, 1775 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Paul and Polly (Cooke) Allen. His mother was a daughter of Nicholas Cooke, governor of the state from 1775 to 1778.
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Paul Allen was born on February 15, 1775 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Paul and Polly (Cooke) Allen. His mother was a daughter of Nicholas Cooke, governor of the state from 1775 to 1778.
Allen graduated from Rhode Island College (Brown University) in the class of 1793. At college he had gained some reputation as an orator, and on November 22, 1792, had delivered an oration in the chapel on the death of a classmate, Roger Williams Howell, which at the request of the students was published. At least six other published orations delivered in Providence or vicinity between 1796 and 1806 are in existence. He studied for the bar, but no one probably was ever more unfitted to practise law than was he.
In 1801 Allen published Original Poems, Serious and Entertaining, a collection of rather graceful verse, obviously patterned after English models. He removed to Philadelphia and was a contributor to the United States Gazette, and to the Port Folio, conducted by Joseph Dennie and Nicholas Biddle. In behalf of the latter he supervised the printing of the History of the Expedition, under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, which appeared in 1814. The last twelve years of his life were spent in Baltimore. Here he was a contributor to the Portico.
For a time he edited the Federal Republican and Baltimore Telegraph, but disagreed with his associates and left. There followed, according to Duyckinck, a period of poverty when he was imprisoned for a debt of thirty dollars. His friends started the Journal of the Times to give him an editorial position. This was succeeded in 1818 by the Morning Chronicle, which he edited till 1824, when he assumed management of the Saturday Evening Herald. He also published the Morning Post.
He projected a History of the American Revolution, the most of which, owing to his irresponsibleness, was written by his friends Neal and Watkins. This appeared in 1819. In 1821, he published Noah, in five cantos.
Allen was rather below the middle size (about five feet six), with dark eyes, dark hair; his face was deeply marked. He was a plain looking, nay, an ordinary looking man with a character of sluggishness, slovenly inaptitude, and moroseness, all about him. He was full of simplicity, credulous as a child, and irresolute in the extreme.
Quotes from others about the person
"There is not a better natured fellow on the earth--bating a momentary petulance here and there with a far off politician in the way of trade, or a little fermentation at home, when he has been pestered by popinjays a little too long; nor a man that will write more, with less substantial information, on any subject, in the same time. He is near sighted; reads with his nose on the paper--and such reading! Lord--I can imagine nothing more dismal than the reading of his own poetry by Paul Allen. It is a continual whine--nasal and barbarous, beyond all conception. " - John Neal
"John Neal did his friend another equally good service by reducing his poem of Noah, it having been submitted to his revision, to one-fifth its original dimensions. " - Evert Augustus Duyckinck
Allen never married.