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- Edward Heron-Allen
- Also known as
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Edward Heron-Allen
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primary name: Heron-Allen, Edward
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other name: Allen, E Heron
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other name: Allen, Edward Heron
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other name: Heron Allen, E T
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pseudonym: Christopher Blayre
- Details
- individual; legal; scientist/engineer; author/poet; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1861-1943
- Biography
- [Pseudonym: Christopher Blayre] Left the family firm of solicitors to write. Publications include: 'Violin Making As It Was and Is' (1884); 'Chiromancy, or the science of palmistry' (1883); 'A Manual of Cheirosophy' (1885). In the late 1880s he made a three-year lecture tour of the USA, speaking about palmistry, and began to write fiction. Returned to the family firm in 1889. Married Marianna Lehmann in 1891, and co-author and co-translated works with her. Translated from Persian into English. Member of the Society for Psychical Research.
Although he had no scientific training, he developed an interest in the chalk foraminifera (protozoa with perforated shell) of Selsey, West Sussex, and wrote 'Selsey Bill: Historic and Prehistoric'. President of the Microscopical Society; elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1919. Presented his collection of books, microscopes, apparatus, specimens and other materials relating to foraminifera to the British Museum (Natural History) in 1926. He donated coins to the British Museum from 1916.
Publications include: 'The Cheetah Girl' (1920s), 'The Purple Sapphire' (1921), 'The Strange Papers of Christopher Blayre' (1932) and 'Some Women of the University' (1934).
The Heron-Allen Society was formed at a meeting at the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester on 5 June 2000 (see: http:freepages pavilion .net/users/tartarus/blayre.htm)
- Bibliography
- Brian W. Harvey and Carol Fitzgerald, (eds.), 'Sussex Shore to Flanders Field - A Journal of the Great War by Edward Heron-Allen', Sussex Record Society and Phillimore & Co, 2002.
R. Kirkpatrick, 'The Heron-Allen Collection of foraminifera', Natural History Magazine, vol.1, 27-30.