Allen, Walter

Walter Allen, in full Walter Ernest Allen, (born Feb. 23, 1911, Birmingham, Eng.—died Feb. 28, 1995, London), British novelist and critic best known for the breadth and accessibility of his criticism.

Allen graduated from the University of Birmingham (B.A., 1932) and taught briefly at his old grammar school before accepting the first of several visiting lectureships and professorships in North America and elsewhere. In 1945 he left teaching to become a literary editor for the New Statesman.

Early in his career Allen published a rapid succession of novels, beginning with Innocence Is Drowned (1938). These deal affectingly with contemporary English working-class life, a subject that he refracted through the memory of an aging radical in what is perhaps his best novel, All in a Lifetime (1959; U.S. title, Threescore and Ten). In 1986, after a 27-year hiatus from fiction, Allen published Get Out Early, the story of a cynical rake and his redemption. Alongside his teaching and novel-writing, Allen’s gift for popular criticism found expression in both print and broadcast media. A memoir of Allen’s encounters with the leading writers of the day, As I Walked down New Grub Street, appeared in 1982. His other works of nonfiction include The English Novel: A Short Critical History (1954), Tradition and Dream: The English and American Novel from the Twenties to Our Time (1964), and The Short Story in English (1981). He also published a collection of stories for children, The Festive Baked-Potato Cart (1948).