Percy Stafford Allen


Percy Stafford Allen was a British classical scholar, best known for his writings on Desiderius Erasmus.

Life

Percy Stafford Allen was born on 7 July, 1869 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England. He was a son of Joseph Allen and Mary Mason Satow. He received his early education in Rottingdean. From 1882, he studied Latin and Greek at Clifton College and after 1888 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. One of his Oxford tutors was the historian and biographer James Anthony Froude. In 1892 he received his BA, and his MA in 1896.
From 1897 to 1901 he taught history at Government College in Lahore, British India. He returned to Oxford in 1908 as a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. From 1924 to 1933 he was president of Corpus Christi College. In 1928 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He was married in 1898 to Helen Mary Allen, daughter of Arthur John Allen and Margaret Agneta Satow.
Allen is best known as the editor of the complete letters of Erasmus of Rotterdam, a twelve-volume work. Among other writings, he also published The Age of Erasmus: Lectures delivered in the University of Oxford and London and Letters of Richard Fox, 1486–1527.

Writings