"The Busiest Man in England" Grant Allen and the Writing Trade, 1875-1900

by Morton, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781403966261
• ISBN10: 1403966265
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-16
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book is the first critical biography of Grant Allen (1848-1899) in a century, based on all the surviving primary sources. Despite his lifelong ill health and relatively short life, Allen was a writer of extraordinary productivity and range. About half of his work reflects interests which ran from Darwinian biology to cultural travel guides. His prosperity, however, was underpinned by fiction; he wrote more than thirty novels, including The Woman Who Did, which has attracted much recent attention from feminist critics and historians. "The Busiest Man in England" uses Allen's career to examine the role and status of the freelance author/journalist in the late Victorian period, and analyzes what it took to succeed in this notoriously tough profession.

Author Biography

Peter Morton teaches in the School of Humanities at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	xi
Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction "The Most Hateful of Professions?"	1	(172)
1 Canada and Oxford (1848-1873)	13	(14)
2 Jamaica (1873-1876)	27	(18)
3 Setting out the Stall (1876-1880)	45	(28)
4 "A Pedlar Crying Stuff": Selling the Wares (1880-1889)	73	(22)
5 The Stock in Trade: Writing Science	95	(16)
6 The Stock in Trade: Light Fiction	111	(14)
7 The Prosperous Tradesman (1890-1895)	125	(8)
8 Dealing with the "Dissenting Grocer"	133	(14)
9 Retailing The Woman Who Did	147	(26)
10 Last Orders (1896-1899)	173	(14)
Conclusion "We of the Proletariate..."	187	(10)
Abbreviations in the Notes	197	(2)
Notes	199	(26)
Bibliography	225	(20)
Index	245