James Allen (Australian colonial author)

James Allen (1806–1886) was an English-born writer, journalist and newspaper owner, who worked in colonial Australia and New Zealand.

Allen was born at Birmingham in 1806, and educated at Horton College. He was for some time a reporter on the Morning Post, but emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, where he started the Times and aided in establishing the South Australian Register. In 1838 he the became the editor of the opposing Southern Australian, a position he held till its closure in 1851. In the year 1857 he went to Melbourne, where he edited the Melbourne Herald and started the Mail, the first penny evening paper issued in that city. [A different account is given in an article in the Australasian Typographical Journal of May 1898 that says that Allen was the editor of the Melbourne Morning Herald from 1851 to 1856]. In 1865 Allen moved to Hobart, Tasmania, and edited the Hobart Mercury, afterwards starting the Evening Mail. He then went to New Zealand, and conducted the Auckland Evening News until 1870, when he returned to Victoria and purchased the Camperdown Chronicle, of which he remained owner till 1880. Allen, who died in 1886, published a "History of Australia" in 1882.