Books: Big Book

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The Author, like his book, is big but active, ponderous but keen. His flat, unhurried Pittsburgh voice might surprise those who think of him as a poet of South Carolina, one of the leaders in the recent revival of Southern letters. But in his 43 years he has come a long way from home. As a plebe at the U. S. Naval Academy he overstrained himself in athletics, was granted an honorable discharge; later (1915) he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with honors as a Bachelor of Science in economics. After a job with the Bell Telephone Co. he enlisted in the National Guard, saw active service along the Mexican border and went to France as first lieutenant of infantry with the A. E. F. Badly wounded and invalided home, Allen settled after the War in Charleston, S. C., where he collaborated with DuBose Hey ward on a book of poems (Carolina Chansons) and in founding the Poetry Society of South Carolina. After a job at Columbia University he lectured for two years at Vassar. One of his undergraduate listeners was Ann Hyde Andrews, whom he afterwards married. They went to Bermuda, spent five years there writing and farming. In an old house in Somerset Parish which Allen thinks was built by a retired pirate (its original name was "Felicity Haul"), he saw few tourists, lived cheaply, wrote most of Anthony Adverse's 500,000 words. Now back in the U. S., he is temporarily resting from his labors, looking for a place to live.

Other books: Israfel: The Life & Times of Edgar Allan Poe, Wampum & Old Gold, Toward the Flame, New Legends, The Blindman.