ABSTRACT
John Allen is usually supposed to have lived two quite discrete lives. Mter qualifying as a surgeon in Edinburgh and acquiring a considerable reputation as a teacher in the extramural school of medical education, he abandoned the profession of medicine in his early thirties for more literary pursuits. In 1802 Allen joined the household of Lord and Lady Holland, first as their physician, later as librarian and general factotum. In this latter incarnation Allen has a secure, if minor, place in the writings on Holland House, that early nineteenth-eentury centre of Whig politics, desultory cultural exchange, and endless dinner parties. Leslie Mitchell maintains that Allen did much to give Holland House 'a reputation for unrestrained, even farouche, ways of thought'.1 One of the Holland children left a memorable verbal portait ofAllen at this period of his life: 'He was a stout, strong man, with a very large head, a broad face, enormous round silver spectacles before a pair of peculiarly bright and intelligent eyes, and with the thickest legs I ever remember.'2
