Grant Allen

Grant Allen (1848-1899) was a Canadian novelist and science writer. While his early writing in the fields of psychology, botany, and entomology sought to support Charles Darwin’s work on evolutionary theory, Allen later turned to fiction and eventually wrote around 30 novels. Friends with Arthur Conan Doyle, Grant Allen was a lesser-known early innovator in crime and detective fiction. His wide-ranging literary output, which influenced William James, G.K. Chesterton, and Sigmund Freud, was often deemed controversial for its critical views on social constructs such as marriage, gender, and religion.