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.
