[Gutenberg 5832] • Recalled to Life

Grant Allen was a a science writer and novelist, and a successful upholder of the theory of evolution.

His scandalous book titled The Woman Who Did, promulgating certain startling views on marriage and kindred questions, became a bestseller. The book told the story of an independent woman who has a child out of wedlock. He was also a pioneer in science fiction, with the 1895 novel The British Barbarians. This book, published about the same time as H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, which includes a mention of Allen, also described time travel.

Early Britain, Anglo-Saxon Britain (1881)-

This little book is an attempt to give a brief sketch of Britain under the early English conquerors, rather from the social than from the political point of view. For that purpose not much has been said about the doings of kings and statesmen; but attention has been mainly directed towards the less obvious evidence afforded us by existing monuments as to the life and mode of thought of the people themselves.

Recalled to Life (1891)-

My babyhood, my childhood, my girlhood, my school-days were all utterly blotted out by that one strange shock of horror. My past life became exactly as though it had never been. I forgot my own name. I forgot my mother-tongue. I forgot everything I had ever done or known or thought about.

Michael's Crag (1893)-

Michael's Crag is a promontory on the coast of Cornwall, and is the scene of a terrible accident, which, in the mind of the one who unwittingly caused it, assumes the aspect of a murder. Years afterward the young man who, when a boy, committed the deed, is by chance thrown into the company of the victim's family, and the complications which arise make up the story.

Miss Cayley's Adventures (1899)-

The story of an intelligent, independent young British woman who sets out around the world in search of adventure. She finds plenty as she trips-up con-men, outsmarts Arabs, kills a tiger and, of course, saves the man she loves. Allen is a great writer so it's not nearly as trite as it may sound. It has humor and a couple of stinging barbs at the condescending attitude that was no doubt prevalent in those heady days of Victoria's global empire.

The British Barbarians (1895)-

Bertram Ingledew turns up in a Surrey village and promptly proceeds to reveal the taboos and absurdities of late 19th century life; as if the people he finds are members of a savage tribe, Bertram applies the techniques of an anthropologist. The class system, property ownership, marriage, and the status of women all come under scrutiny.

Charles Darwin (1885)-

In this little volume I have endeavoured to present the life and work of Charles Darwin viewed as a moment in a great revolution, in due relation both to those who went before and to those who come after him. Recognising, as has been well said, that the wave makes the crest, not the crest the wave, I have tried to let my hero fall naturally into his proper place in a vast onward movement of the human intellect, of which he was himself at once a splendid product and a moving cause of the first importance. I have attempted to show him both as receiving the torch from Lamarck and Malthus, and as passing it on with renewed brilliancy to the wide school of evolutionary thinkers whom his work was instrumental in arousing to fresh and vigorous activity along a thousand separate and varied lines of thought and action.

Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose (1899)- This early detective novel, featuring a female sleuth, was the last work by Mr. Grant Allen, with a final chapter edited by his friend and neighbour, Dr. Conan Doyle.

The White Man's Foot (1888)-

The old priest of Mauna Loa, the great Hawaiian volcano, is to all outward appearance a good, civilized Christian man, who has discarded his old beliefs and has heartily accepted the more excellent way