Walter Allen (Walter Ernest Allen) Biography

English novelist and critic, born in Birmingham, educated at Birmingham University. Among his many academic appointments he was Professor and Chairman of English Studies, New University of Ulster, Coleraine (1967–73). In the 1930s he wrote three realistic novels about English working-class life, Innocence is Drowned (1938), Blind Man's Ditch (1939), and Living Space (1940), all set in Birmingham, and reflecting the political and social tensions of the time. His finest novel is generally considered to be All in a Lifetime (1959; US title Threescore and Ten); through its narrator, an old man in his middle seventies, social change and the rise of the Labour Party are vividly described. Widely known as a critic and literary historian of the novel, his critical works include The English Novel (1954) and The Short Story in English (1981); and studies of Arnold Bennett (1948), Joyce Cary (1953), and George Eliot (1964), among others. As I Walked Down New Grub Street: Memories of a Writing Life (1981) is an autobiography.