A historical novelist worthy to rank with Nathaniel Hawthorne,
James Lane Allen has been called. Both have given us pictures of
the lives of our forefathers; but, while Hawthorne has shown us
New England, Allen draws the Blue Grass region of Kentucky and its
people.
It may be due to the fact that James Lane Allen was a seventh child
that he has achieved such remarkable success in literature. He was
born in Fayette County, near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849, the
youngest child of Richard and Helen Allen. He can number among his
paternal ancestors some of the first settlers of Virginia. One of
these ancestors, Richard Allen, moved to Kentucky, where he lived
the easy, hospitable life of a gentleman farmer on his large estate.
Mr. Allen’s mother was a descendant of the Pennsylvania
Scotch-Irish and the Brooks family of Virginia. A native of
Mississippi, she was a lover of nature and literature. She inspired
in her son a love for reading old romances, poetry, and history.
Although Allen was only twelve years old when the storm of Civil
War broke over our country, he was old enough to realize its
horrors and the suffering that it brought to the people of the
South. Just before the beginning of the war his father lost his
fortune; so the formal education that Allen received was small;
but under his mother’s guidance he pursued his studies at home.
Long walks in the fields and forests about his home gave him a keen
insight into nature.
He was graduated from Transylvania University at Lexington,
Kentucky, in 1872, and three years later received a degree of A. M.
from there. A little before this his father died, and James had to
begin teaching in order to meet expenses. He spent a year as master
in a country school, walking six miles to and from the school every
day.
For two years he taught in Missouri and then came back to Kentucky
as a private tutor. He was called to his alma mater to teach, and
two years later Bethany College, in West Virginia, offered him the
chair of Latin and higher English.
He planned to go to Germany for a time; but gave this up when the
idea of becoming a doctor of medicine attracted him. This was when
he was doing graduate work at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But his
love of literature led him to take up writing, and in 1884 he
moved to New York. He arrived there unknown and with no letters of
introduction; but “he took up his abode in a garret and started
out in a very humble way.” He sent letters to the New York Evening
Post, poems to Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly, and essays to
the Critic and the Forum. A criticism of Henry James’ “Portrait of
a Lady” first attracted attention to the young author, and soon
there was a strong demand for his sketches of Kentucky life. “The
Blue Grass Region of Kentucky” was the title given to the collected
volume of these sketches.
Mr. Allen then moved to Cincinnati; but later moved again to
Washington, believing that the capital of the country would be
the future home of literature and art in America. In Washington,
however, he found too much social and official distraction; so he
returned to New York.
“The Kentucky Cardinal,” published in 1895, is one of Mr. Allen’s
best books. It is a sort of pastoral poem in prose, showing the
struggle between Nature and Love. “The Choir Invisible” shows the
noble love of a married woman for a man who is not her husband.
James Lane Allen is best known as a writer of fiction; but he
has also published many critical articles and much verse. He is
recognized as one of the most poetic and dramatic of American
novelists.
[Illustration: WINSTON CHURCHILL]
Winston Churchill, a master of the historical novel, is the
subject of one of the six intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating
“American Novelists.”