Allen, Frederick Lewis

Allen, Frederick Lewis, 1890-1954, American social historian and editor, b. Boston, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1912; M.A., 1913). He is best remembered for his journalistic but nonetheless penetrating works of social history, including Only Yesterday (1932), Since Yesterday (1940), and The Big Change (1952). After teaching English at Harvard, he was an assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1914-16), then managing editor of The Century (1916-17). In 1923 he began working for Harper's Magazine, where he remained until 1953, becoming chief editor in 1941.

Frederick Lewis Allen (July 5, 1890 Boston, Massachusetts - February 13, 1954 New York City) was the editor of Harper's Magazine and also notable as an American historian of the first half of the twentieth century. His specialty was writing about what was at the time recent and popular history. He studied at Groton and graduated from Harvard University in 1912 and received his Masters in 1913. He taught at Harvard briefly thereafter before becoming assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1914, and then managing editor of The Century in 1916. He began working for Harper's in 1923, becoming editor-in-chief in 1941, a position he held until shortly before his death. His wife, Dorothy Penrose Allen, died just prior to the publication of Only Yesterday.

Allen's popularity coincided with increased interest in history among the book-buying public of the 1920s and 1930s. This interest was met, not by the university-employed historian, but by an amateur historian writing in his free time. Aside from Allen, these historians included Carl Sandburg, Bernard DeVoto, Douglas Southall Freeman, Henry F. Pringle, and Allan Nevins (before his Columbia appointment).

His best-known books were Only Yesterday (1931), a book chronicling American life in the 1920s, and Since Yesterday (1940), which covered the depression of the 1930s. Allen also wrote two biographies, the first of which was about Paul Revere Reynolds, a literary agent of the era. This work is notable because it contains a chapter about Stephen Crane, but is difficult to find because it was privately published.

Bibliography

Allen, Frederick Lewis (1931). Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. New York: Harper and Row. (history)
Allen, Frederick Lewis (1935). The Lords of Creation. New York: Harper and Row. (history, biography, economics)
Allen, Frederick Lewis (1940). Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America, September 3, 1929 to September 3, 1939. New York: Harper and Row. (history)
Allen, Frederick Lewis (1944). Paul Revere Reynolds: A Biographical Sketch. Scranton: The Haddon Craftsmen. (biography)
Allen, Frederick Lewis; editors of Look Magazine (1948). Look at America. New York City. A Handbook in Pictures, Maps and Text for the Vacationist, the Traveler and the Stay-at-home. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (travel)
Allen, Frederick Lewis (1949). The Great Pierpont Morgan. New York: Harper and Row. (biography)
Allen, Frederick Lewis (1952). The Big Change - America's Transformation 1900-1950. New York: Harper and Row. (history)

Notes

1. Higham, John (1986). History : Professional Scholarship in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

External Links

• Works by Frederick Lewis Allen at Project Gutenberg Australia