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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: James McGrigor Allan

Author: James McGrigor Allan (1827–1916)

Biography: James Mcgrigor Allan was born in 1827 in Bristol, the son of physician Colin Allan and Jane Gibbon. His younger brother was the poet Peter John Allan (1825–1848). At a young age, the family moved to Canada where his father served as the chief medical officer of Nova Scotia. By the 1850s, Allan had moved to Aberdeen where he began his writing career with collecting his brother's poems for publication and authoring a play The Woman-Hater (1856). He switched to novels starting with Ernest Basil (1857). Allan is most notable for being a staunch anti-suffrage advocate writing two books supporting his views, The Intellectual Severance of Men and Women (1860) and Woman Suffrage Wrong in Principle and Practice (1890). He later moved to Surrey and married in 1886. Allan died in 1916 in Epsom.

Author Tags:

References: Allibone; British Census (1861, 1881, 1911); DNB (Peter John Allan); RLF (case number 1689)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Ernest Basil: A Novel.  3 vol.  London: T. C. Newby, 1857.
  2. The Cost of a Coronet: A Romance of Modern Life.  3 vol.  London: T. C. Newby, 1861.
  3. The Last Days of a Bachelor: An Autobiography.  2 vol.  London: T. C. Newby, 1862.
  4. Nobly False: A Novel.  2 vol.  London: T. C. Newby, 1863.
  5. Father Stirling: A Novel.  2 vol.  London: T. C. Newby, 1864.
  6. The Wild Curate: A Novel.  3 vol.  London: F. V. White, 1887.
  7. A Lady's Four Perils: A Novel, Illustrating Society Twelve Years Since.  3 vol.  London: F. V. White, 1888.