The Woman Who Did

Canadian scientific author and novelist Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (February 24, 1848 - October 25, 1899) received his education in England. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, he actively promoted evolution in public. Allen was born in Kingston, Canada West, close to Wolfe Island (known as Ontario after Confederation). Joseph Antisell Allen, a Protestant pastor from Dublin, Ireland, was his father. Allen attended Merton College in Oxford and King Edward's School in Birmingham for his education. He joined Queen's Institution, a Jamaican black college, as a professor in his mid-20s. He was influenced by the associationist psychology of Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain. He produced 30 books between 1884 and 1899, including the controversial The Woman Who Did. The Type-writer Girl and Olive Pratt Rayner were pen names used by English novelist Grant Allen. With the publication of The British Barbarians, he made history in the field of science fiction (1895). On October 25, 1899, Grant Allen passed away from liver cancer at his house in Haslemere, Surrey, England. Before finishing Hilda Wade, he passed away.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at 1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Mrs. Dewsbury's lawn was held by those who knew it the loveliest in Surrey. The smooth and springy sward that stretched in front of the house was all composed of a tiny yellow clover. It gave beneath the foot like the pile on velvet. One's gaze looked forth from it upon the endless middle distances of the oak-clad Weald, with the uncertain blue line of the South Downs in the background. Ridge behind ridge, the long, low hills of paludina limestone stood out in successive tiers, each thrown up against its neighbor by the misty haze that broods eternally over the wooded valley; till, roaming across them all, the eye rested at last on the rearing scarp of Chanctonbury Ring, faintly pencilled on the furthest skyline. Shadowy phantoms of dim heights framed the verge to east and west. Alan Merrick drank it in with profound satisfaction. After those sharp and clear-cut Italian outlines, hard as lapis lazuli, the mysterious vagueness, the pregnant suggestiveness, of our English scenery strikes the imagination; and Alan was fresh home from an early summer tour among the Peruginesque solidities of the Umbrian Apennines. "How beautiful it all is, after all," he said, turning to his entertainer. "In Italy 'tis the background the painter dwells upon; in England, we look rather at the middle distance."