George Allen

The son of John and Rebecca Allen, he was born on 26 March 1832 at Newark-on-Trent, and was educated at a private grammar school there. His father died in 1849, and in that year he was apprenticed for four years to an uncle (his mother's brother), a builder in Clerkenwell, London. He became a skilled joiner, and was employed for three and a half years in that capacity on the woodwork of the interior of Dorchester House, Park Lane. Allen and another workman worked for 79 days on a single door in the house, and Ruskin later showed a model of this door to his friends as a specimen of English craftsmanship.

Allen was brought further into connection with Ruskin by marrying (25 December 1856) the latter's mother's maid, Anne Eliza Hobbes. They had four sons and four daughters. The eldest daughter, Grace Allen, and the two eldest sons, William and Hugh, carried on the family business after their father's death. In 1911 George Allen & Sons amalgamated with Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd. (see William Swan Sonnenschein) and became George Allen & Co. Ltd. In 1913 the firm became insolvent and it was taken over by Stanley Unwin, emerging as George Allen and Unwin.