The firm of Allen & Bryant was formed in 1819 to sell books and stationery in Elizabethtown (later Elizabeth), New Jersey. The partners were Samuel C. Allen and John Jay Bryant (1799–1859). A native of Concord, Massachusetts, Bryant continued to operate a bookstore into the 1830s. He represented Essex County in the New Jersey General Assembly, 1833–34. In 1839 Bryant was an incorporator of a ferry between Elizabethtown and New York City. He joined the New Jersey Historical Society in 1846, and four years later he was appointed postmaster of Elizabethtown. Bryant died while in Kentucky on business (Elizabethtown New-Jersey Journal, 16 Nov. 1819; Concord, Massachusetts Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1635–1850 [(1894)], 270; Publishers’ Weekly 67 [1905]: 643; John P. Dullard, comp., Manual of the Legislature of New Jersey, One Hundred and Forty-Fifth Session. 1921 [1921], 178; Acts of the sixty-third General Assembly of the State of New Jersey … Being the First Sitting [1839], 139–42; DNA: RG 29, CS, N.J., Elizabethtown, 1840, 1850; New Jersey Historical Society, Proceedings 1 [1847]: 126; DNA: RG 28, RAP; New York Herald, 7 July 1859; New-York Observer, 7 July 1859; Bryant’s gravestone inscription in First Presbyterian Churchyard, Elizabeth, N.J.).

Crediting “An American” as the author, Allen & Bryant soon published The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte: containing historical sketches, and anecdotes illustrative of his public and private character (Elizabethown, 1820).