A contemporary of Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bob Allen attended Christ's Hospital and left the school as a Senior Grecian.
[1] He attended University College, Oxford, where, in his rooms, the historic meeting between Robert Southey and Coleridge took place.
Allen practiced as a journalist for a number of years, writing for the periodicals The Oracle, The True Briton, The Star, and The Traveller.
Lamb wrote several short reminiscences of Allen included in his essay "Newspapers", and "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago".
Hunt wrote: "Nor shalt thou, their composer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old cloister shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs; or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own."