Hervey Allen

William Hervey Allen (December 8, 1889 – December 28, 1949) was an American author.

Biography

Allen was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from University of Pittsburgh in 1915, where he also became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.^[1]

He served as a Lieutenant in the 28th (keystone) Division, United States Army during World War I and fought in the Aisne-Marne offensive July–August 1918. He wrote Toward the Flame (1926), a nonfictional account of his experiences in the war.^[2]

His first book, Wampum and Old Gold, was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Prize.

Allen is best known for his work Anthony Adverse. He also planned a series of novels about colonial America called The Disinherited. He completed three works in the series: The Forest and the Fort (1943), Bedford Village (1944), and Toward the Morning (1948). The novels tell the story of Salathiel Albine, a frontiersman kidnapped as a boy by Shawnee Indians in the 1750s. All three works were collected and published as the City in the Dawn. Allen also wrote Israfel (1926), a biography of American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

For a period of time, Allen taught at the Porter Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina. He also taught English at Charleston High School which at that time, although public, was only for boys. (The girls went to Memminger.) There he met and befriended DuBose Heyward. He later was a professor at Vassar University where he met his wife, Ann "Annette" Andrews. They had three children, Marcia, Mary Ann and Richard.

In the 1940s he co-edited the Rivers of America Series with Carl Carmer. Allen was a good friend of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and instigated her writing The Everglades: River of Grass.^[3] Allen was close friends with Robert Frost and Ogden Nash.

Allen died at his home, called the Glades, in Coconut Grove, Florida,^[2] aged 60, from a heart attack, and was found by his wife Annette.

Bibliography

• Wampum and old gold. Yale University Press. 1921.
• Toward the Flame, George H. Doran Company, 1926 reprint. University of Nebraska Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8032-5947-8.
• Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1926) reissued 1934.
• Anthony Adverse (1933) ISBN 4-87187-890-2
• Action at Aquila, Farrar & Rinehart, (1938)
• The Forest and the Fort (1943)
• Bedford Village (1944)
• Toward the Morning (1948)
• The City in the Dawn (1950)
• Achmed Abdullah, Hervey Allen, ed. (2003). Lute and Scimitar. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7661-7626-3. (reprint)

Sources

1. Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 49. ISBN 0-86576-008-X
2. "William Hervey Allen, Jr., First Lieutenant, United States Army". Retrieved April 13, 2016.
3. Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. Marjory Stoneman Douglas; Voice of the River. Englewood, FL: Pineapple Press, 1987. p. 190.

References

• Hervey Allen Papers (Hervey Allen Papers, 1831–1965, SC.1952.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh)

External links

• Biographical Sketch by Ryan Cannon
• The Rivers of America Series, A Descriptive Bibliography, Carol Fitzgerald, 2001
• Works by Hervey Allen at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Hervey Allen at Project Gutenberg Australia
• Works by or about Hervey Allen at Internet Archive
• Works by Hervey Allen at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
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