He was born in London, the youngest of four children of George Allen and Catherine Herring. He was educated at Elstree and Harrow but did not attend university. In 1879 he joined the family firm of Allen and Son, solicitors, in Soho, London. He retired from practicing law on his fiftieth birthday.

Although he was a lawyer by trade, he also wrote, lectured on and created violins, was an expert on the art of chiromancy or palmistry, having read palms and analysed the handwriting of luminaries of the period. He wrote on musical, literary and scientific subjects ranging from foraminifera, marine zoology, meteorology, as a Persian scholar translated Classics such as the Rubaiyat of Omar_Khayyam and The Lament of Baba Tahir, also wrote on local history, archaeology, Buddhist philosophy, the cultivation, gourmet appreciation of and culture of the asparagus, as well as a number of novels and short stories of science fiction and horror written under his pseudonym of "Christopher Blayre."

• B?b? ??hir ?Ory?n, The Lament of B?b? T?hir: Being the Rub?’iy?t of B?b? T?hir, Hamand?ni (`Ury?n). Translated by Edward Heron-Allen and Rendered into English Verse by Elizabeth Curtis Brenton, London, 1902.

• ?Omar ?ayy?m, Edward FitzGerald’s Rubâ’iyât of Omar Khayyâm with Their Original Persian Sources, Collated from his Own MSS., London, 1899.