Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (February 24, 1848 - October 25, 1899) was an English-educated Canadian science writer and novelist. In the second half of the nineteenth century, he was a public proponent of evolution. Allen was the second son of Catharine Ann Grant and the Rev. Joseph Antisell Allen, a Protestant preacher from Dublin, Ireland, and was born on Wolfe Island near Kingston, Canada West (known as Ontario after Confederation). His mother was the fifth Baron de Longueuil's daughter. Allen was educated at home until he and his parents moved to the United States, then to France, and eventually to the United Kingdom when he was 13 years old. In the United Kingdom, he attended King Edward's School in Birmingham and Merton College in Oxford. After abandoning his teaching, he returned to England in 1876, where he dedicated his abilities to writing, acquiring a name for his scientific writings and creative works. One of Allen's early essays, "Note-Deafness" (a description of what became known as amusia, published in 1878 in the academic magazine Mind), is cited with praise in a 2007 book by Oliver Sacks. Allen married twice, first to Caroline Ann Bootheway (1846-1871) and then to Ellen Jerrard (1853-1878), with whom he had one son, Jerrard Grant Allen (1878-1946), a theatrical agent/manager who married the actress and vocalist Violet Englefield in 1913. Reginald "Reggie" Grant Allen (1910-1985) was their son.