Hervey Allen

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William Hervey Allen (born December 8, 1889 in Pittsburgh , † December 28, 1949 in Miami ) was an American writer .

life and work

Allen was the son of entrepreneur Hervey Allen Sr. and his wife Helen Eby Meyers Allen. He left high school without a degree and moved to the US Naval Academy in 1913, injured there in a sports competition and had to leave the academy. During the First World War , he served with the National Guard of his home country in France and was wounded there, experiences that he later incorporated into his works. After the war, he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in economics and continued his education at Harvard.

After graduation, he taught English and lectured on American literature at Columbia University and on modern poetry at Vassar College . There he met Annette Andrews as a student. After completing their studies, the two married. Since his wife was 19 years younger than him and previously his student, the wedding was a scandal.

Allen wrote poems and novels. A first work was published as early as 1916 with Ballads of the Border . The fictional war diary Toward the Flame ( 1926) and Israfel , a biography of Edgar Allan Poe (also 1926) , gained importance . He gained world fame through the adventurous development novel Anthony Adverse 1933, German Antonio Adverso Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1947. The novel covers the period from around 1780 to 1840 in nine books and leads the hero from childhood in an Italian orphanage and Livorno through the imperial France, as a merchant to Cuba and North America, as a slave trader to Africa until his end as a settler in El Paso. The novel was in 1936 by Mervyn LeRoy filmed .

In 1936 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Other works

  • Action at Aquila (1937, German Colonel Franklin )
  • The Forest and the Fort (1943, German The Forest and the Fort )
  • Bedfort village (1948, German The village on the edge of the world )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hervey Allen Papers
  2. ^ Members: Hervey Allen. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 13, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Allen, Hervey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Allen, William Hervey (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1949
Place of death Miami