Willis Boyd Allen

Born in Kittery Point, Maine, in 1855, Willis Boyd Allen studied at Harvard, graduating in 1878, and then earned a law degree from Boston University in 1881. He practiced law in Boston for a short time before turning more fully to literary work.

Allen built his reputation as an author of children's stories and other popular writing. Reference sources from his own era describe him as the author of many books, including the Pine-Cone Stories, The Red Mountain of Alaska, A Son of Liberty, Around the Yule Log, Navy Blue, and Cleared for Action. His poems and prose also appeared in well-known magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, Century, and Scribner's.

He also worked in publishing, serving as editor of The Cottage Hearth and co-editor of Our Sunday Afternoon. The surviving record suggests a writer who moved easily between domestic magazine work, verse, and fiction for younger readers, leaving behind a broad and distinctly American body of work from the late 1800s and early 1900s.