James Lane Allen

Novelist and writer

James Lane Allen (December 21, 1849 – February 18, 1925) was an American novelist and short story writer whose work, including the novel A Kentucky Cardinal, often depicted the culture and dialects of his native Kentucky.

His work is characteristic of the late 19th-century local color era, when writers sought to capture the vernacular in their fiction.

Allen has been described as "Kentucky's first important novelist".