Alfred Ollivant (writer)

Alfred Ollivant (1874–1927) was an English novelist, known for his novel Owd Bob. Ollivant also published about a dozen other novels ranging from small-scale cautionary tales to grand historical stories.

Alfred Ollivant was born in Nuthurst, West Sussex, in 1874 and became an writer after a horse-riding injury ended his brief military career.

Owd Bob, his first novel, was published in 1898. Set in rural Cumbria, in northern England, the novel concerns a suspected sheep-killing collie, Bob. Even though most of the book's dialogue is written in the Cumbrian dialect, it became popular in the United States. Ollivant published a sequel, Danny, in 1902.

He was also a short-story contributor to the magazines The Atlantic Monthly and the Boston Evening Transcript.

Alfred Ollivant died in London on 19 January 1927.

• Owd Bob – Being the Story of Bob, Son of Battle, The Last of the Grey Dogs of Kenmuir (1898)
• Danny (1902)
• The Redcoat Captain: A Story of That Country (1907)
• The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea (1908)
• The Taming of John Blunt (1911)
• The Royal Road (1912)
• The Brown Mare, and Other Studies of England under the Cloud (1916)
• Boy Woodburn: A Story of the Sussex Downs (1917)
• Two Men: A Romance of Sussex (1919)
• One Woman: Being the Second Part of a Romance of Sussex (1921)
• Devil Dare (1923)
• Old For-ever: An Epic of Beyond the Indus (1923)
• Boxer & Beauty: A Tale of Two Cart-horses (1924)
• Tomorrow (1927)
• "The Next Step, An Essay on the Missing Policeman Dedicated to the Masses of Mankind, Silent and Suffering" (1919)

• Works by Alfred Ollivant at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Alfred Ollivant at the Internet Archive