[1] He was the first student at Oxford University to obtain a PhD degree in modern Arabic literature, which he did under the supervision of Muhammad Mustafa Badawi.
In 1968, Allen moved from Bristol to Philadelphia to take up an academic position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he subsequently taught generations of students and Arabic scholars.
As a translator, Allen has brought forth into English numerous works of contemporary Arabic literature, a list of which is given below.
[2] One of his key works is The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction (1st edition 1982), which initially took the form of a series of lectures at the University of Manchester.
For the series The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, he edited the volume spanning 1150 to 1850, which was titled The Post-Classical Period (2006).