Thomas William Allen, FBA (9 May 1862 – 30 April 1950) was an English classicist, scholar of Ancient Greek and palaeographer. He was a fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, from 1890 until his death sixty years later. He is best known for his editions of Homer for Oxford Classical Texts and work on Greek Palaeography.

Allen was born on 9 May 1862 at 103 Camden Road Villas, Camden Town, London, the eldest child of Thomas Bull Allen, a wholesale tea dealer, and his wife Amelia Le Lacheur, daughter of William Le Lacheur.^[1][2] His sister Edith married another classicist John Percival Postgate, who was her tutor at Girton College, Cambridge.^[3][4] Details about Allen's upbringing are lacking, but he was educated at Amersham School and by private tutors before going up to University College London in 1880.^[1][5] In June of the next year he was elected to a classical scholarship at The Queen's College, Oxford, matriculating on 28 October 1881.^[6][7] He earned honours: first class in Mods (Honour Moderations) 1882 and first class in Literae Humaniores 1885.^[8] After receiving his B.A. in 1885 he was made a Fellow of University College London the same year, a rare honour. He began teaching, standing in as a temporary professor of Humanity in the University of Edinburgh for the 1885–6 school year.^[1]

Allen became keenly interested in Greek manuscripts and published his first notes on the subject in 1887. He would later write in the preface to his magnum opus: "My interest in palaeography and philology began with the man to whom I dedicate this book, my only teacher."^[9] That man was Alfred Goodwin (1849–1892), Professor of Greek at University College London. Allen also dedicated his first book Notes on Abbreviations in Greek Manuscripts (1889) to him. Goodwin was much respected and was considered by many to be a remarkable and stimulating teacher.^{[note 1]} Allen became a close friend and assisted Goodwin in his work on a new edition of the Homeric Hymns by collating a number of manuscripts. Goodwin had conceived the edition as a two-volume production, with text and commentary, but after his premature death, only notes to about four hundred lines of the text could be located. Allen was asked to assume responsibility for seeing what remained through the press, a task that entailed considerable labour on his part, though out of modesty he omitted his name from the title page (Hymni Homerici, ed. Goodwin [Oxford, 1893]).^[10][11]

In the Michaelmas Term 1887 Allen was elected to a Craven Fellowship at Oxford.^[12] Under the new scheme of 1886, the Craven Fellow was to receive £200 annually for two years and was "required to spend at least eight months of each year of his tenure of the Fellowship in residence abroad for the purpose of study at some place or places approved by the electing Committee."^[13] Allen had proposed to the electors three lines of study: "a collation of MSS. of the Iliad, a collection of materials bearing upon palaeography generally, and, in cases where is seemed useful, cataloguing of manuscripts."^[14] He followed his proposal and spent the bulk of 1888 and 1889 primarily in Italy combing the libraries for relevant manuscripts.^{[note 2]} His first book Notes on Abbreviations in Greek Manuscripts (1889) offered the result of his palaeographical investigations and was well received by England's greatest expert on the subject Sir Edward Maunde Thompson.^[15][16] Although not a comprehensive work, it was then the best study of the topic in English and is still a useful guide for students.^[1] The next year he would publish his second book Notes on Greek Manuscripts in Italian Libraries (1890), which offered useful "rough lists," providing pertinent details not available in published catalogues, which were often inadequate, or did not exist. The Convocation at Oxford had authorized an expenditure of £500 for the production of the report, the large sum being indicative of their satisfaction with his first publication.^{[17][note 3]} Not only were these trips productive in terms of providing the young scholar with a wealth of palaeographical experience, but at the end of his travels, while in Florence, he would meet his future wife Miss Laura Hope.^[1] Following these labors he was awarded a M.A. in 1889 and elected Fellow of The Queen's College in 1890.^{[18][19][20][8]} As for the latter election, the Senior Tutor at the time wrote that it "was made without examination, a compliment which has never before been paid to anyone by this college.^[1]

In the 1890s Allen focused his labours on what would be his life's work, the texts of Homer and the Homeric Hymns. During the latter part of the decade he began a working relationship with David B. Monro, a leading Homeric scholar and Provost of Oriel College, Oxford.^{[note 4]} In 1896 Monro published his Homeric text Homeri Opera et reliquiae, which included the version of the Homeric Hymns that Allen had edited three years earlier. At the start of the next year, the Delegates of Oxford University Press announced "a standard and uniform series" of "Oxford Classical Texts", with the responsibility for Homer being assigned to Monro and Allen.^[21] The fruit of their collaboration would be published five years later, a two-volume edition of the Iliad, Homeri Opera I-II (1902). During this decade Allen was struggling financially, and as a result was forced to delay his wedding four years until 1894. Even then, after they moved into their new residence at 6 Canterbury Road, his wife's aunt and sister took part of the house and contributed towards expenses. Allen twice applied for more remunerative positions, first for the chair of Humanity at the University of Edinburgh in 1891 and then for the chair of Greek at the University of Glasgow in 1899, both of which he failed to obtain.^[1] Fortunately, he was appointed a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway College in 1893, a position he held until 1918, and which would bring in additional monies.^[22][23]

In the first decades of the twentieth century Allen published his editions of Homeric texts. He brought out revised versions of his Oxford Classical Text of the Iliad (2nd ed., 1908; 3rd ed. 1920), the Odyssey (1st ed. 1908; 2nd ed. 1917/1919), and the Homeric Hymns (1912). He collaborated with E. E. Sikes, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of St John's College, Cambridge, to bring out an edition of the Homeric Hymns (1904) with an English introduction and running commentary. He produced a similar edition (with commentary) of the Catalogue of Ships (1921), a catalogue in Book 2 of Homer's Iliad (2.494-759), which lists the contingents of the Achaean army that sailed to Troy. Finally, in 1931 he published his edito maior of the Iliad, a three-volume work, with the first volume containing solely introductory materials (in English). All of his editions of Homer were praised at the time and were the products of years of labour, but they have subsequently been criticized; Nigel Wilson has suggested that his "classification of the Iliad manuscripts was essentially flawed ... There is so much inaccuracy in what Allen states ... that one cannot trust him at all".^[1][4] Despite this criticism, they remain in print as the official Oxford edition. His only monograph was Homer: The Origins and the Transmission (1924), a collection of his more important articles, revised and augmented. In the preface he offers a frank assessment: "Time was when I intended to write a book on Homer, a continuous book which should cover the whole subject and solve the whole question—his age, personality, method, theme ... As time went on I was discouraged by the failure, so it seemed to me, of my contemporaries, English and foreign, and by the discovery of my own incapacity. I should like to put this last down to the drawbacks of the teaching profession (which are real) and the tutor's rusty pen. But I cannot conceal from myself that I might have overcome these obstacles had I been more of what literary people call in their own case a creative artist" (p. 5). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1922.^[2]

Allen was a very conservative text critic. Two years after his publication of Goodwin's edition, he offered a "sequel" that was to provide the text-critical principles he had followed. He first characterizes the efforts of earlier editors: "The Greek classics have been read, studied, and edited for above four hundred years; the simple and easy corrections that the early editors, Greeks and Italians, made in their texts have been followed by the more learned but of necessity less and less certain attempts of Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Germans, English, who have provided every ancient writer with an accumulation of alternative readings which exceeds in bulk his own words." He then offers his own criteria for textual emendation: "To lay down the canons that determine a good emendation is not an easy task. I will content myself with stating one principle, not the only one, but that which is in most danger of being overlooked, namely, that no emendation is certain the passing of which into the actual documentary reading cannot be explained according to recognized graphical laws. If this condition be unfulfilled, not the most brilliant or witty substitute for the text can be accepted. The datum, the evidence given by the MSS., is that from which we start, and to which we come back; to depart therefrom is to compose, to rewrite the author, to write better than the author. We are tied by the document, and within the radius of graphical change about it lies the field for our invention."^{[24][note 5]}

Allen married Laura Charlotte Hope, the eldest daughter of William Hope, a recipient of the Victoria Cross for bravery during the Crimean War, and his wife Margaret Graham. They were engaged on 27 February 1890, a couple of months after they had met in Florence, but would not marry until 1894. They had one child, a daughter, Charlotte Allen, born in 1896. Mrs. Allen would become a devoted member of the newly formed Christian Science movement, which had only begun to hold public services in London the year that Charlotte was born. It is not clear what T. W. Allen's religious beliefs were, but apparently he was never baptized, a neglect that apparently cost him a Studentship at Christ Church, Oxford.^[1] Unfortunately, it was his wife's adherence to the tenets of the new healing faith from America that resulted in the great disaster of his life. In December 1919, twenty-three-year-old Charlotte became critically ill and died, the tragic result of following the rule to not seek medical help for illness.^{[note 6]} It was a loss from which he never fully recovered.^[2] Laura Allen died on March 25, 1936, at Oxford. Her death notice ended: "Whom have I in heaven but thee: and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee" (Ps. 73:24, Coverdale trans.).^[25] Allen was old-fashioned in tutorials, but was the patron of a dining society, a lover of fine food and wine, and a much-respected and courteous member of college life.^[1] He died on 30 April 1950, at his home, 24 St Michael's Street, Oxford.^[2] His funeral was held at Queen's College Chapel on May 4, the service being conducted by the Rev. D. E. Nineham.^[26]