James Lane Allen.
Among the many literary lights which the south has given us is James Lane Allen. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849, and comes of one of the old Virginia families. Shortly after the Civil war broke out Mr. Allen’s father lost his fortune, and James in consequence had to work and attend school simultaneously. He graduated with honors from the Transylvania university, Lexington, in 1872. Then he began to teach for a livelihood. Subsequently he was called to a professorship in Transylvania university, and later was a professor of Latin and higher English at Bethany college, West Virginia. In 1884 he went to New York to make literature his profession. He was then unknown in that city, but soon gained recognition as one of the most poetic and dramatic of American novelists. Of his many books The Choir Invisible, A Summer in Arcady, and Aftermath, are perhaps the most in demand by the reading public.