Author: Allen, John Carter
Biography:
ALLEN, John Carter (1795-1872: C. L. Berry)
pseudonyms John Hay Allan, Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Born at Newton, Oystermouth, Glamorgan, Allen was the eldest son of Thomas Allen of the Royal Navy; his mother was Catherine Matilda (Manning) Allen. His grandfather was Admiral John Carter Allen (d 1800). The history of Thomas and his two sons, John and Charles, is full of spurious claims linking them with the aristocracy (the Earls of Erroll) and Jacobite royalty (the family story was that Thomas was a legitimate son of Charles Edward Stuart). By the 1820s, John and Charles were living in London, had inserted “Hay” into their names, and changed the spelling of their surname to “Allan” to make it appear more Scottish. John seems to have travelled in the Highlands from 1819 to 1821. His book of poems appeared in late April 1822 and met with reviews denouncing the poems as poor imitations of Scott. The spurious edition claiming to be by Scott must have appeared later that year, but no advertisements or reviews of it have been located. The printing by S. Goswell is identical in all respects; only the title page is different. It seems unlikely that either Hurst, Robinson or Constable were aware of this edition, and there is no evidence that Scott knew of it (although Allen had sent him a copy of the edition with John Hay Allan on the title page). John collaborated with Frederick William Crouch to produce and publish musical versions of six of the ballads from the book. John and Charles later lived in Scotland, changing their names to Sobieski Stolberg Stuart, becoming Catholics, and masquerading as the grandsons of Charles Edward Stuart. In later life they returned to London where they frequented the British Library reading room in Scottish costume. Their other publications include Vestiarium Scoticum (1842), The Costumes of the Clans (1845), Tales of the Century (1847), and Lays of the Deer Forest (1848). John married Georgina Kendall in 1845, and he died at London. (ODNB [as John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart] 27 Mar. 2019; C. L. Berry, “An Annotated Pedigree of the Allen Family and the So-Called Sobieski-Stuarts,” Notes and Queries 197 [1952] 511-13; Craig Buchanan, “The Sobieski-Stuart Compositions,” Notes and Queries 61 [2014] 531-36; Abbotsford Cata.)