William Allingham was born on 19 March 1824 in Ballyshannon, a small town in the south of County Donegal in Ulster in the north of Ireland; he was the son of the manager of a local bank who was of English descent. His younger brothers and sisters were Catherine (born 1826), John (born 1827), Jane (born 1829), Edward (born 1831, and lived only a few months) and a still-born brother (born 1833). During his childhood his parents moved twice within the town, where the boy enjoyed the country sights and gardens, learned to paint and listened to his mother’s piano-playing. When he was nine, his mother died.

He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution until the age of 14, when he obtained a post in the custom-house of his native town, and held several similar posts in Ireland and England until 1870. During this period were published his Poems (1850; which included his well-known poem, ‘The Fairies’) and Day and Night Songs (1855; illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others). (Rossetti’s Letters to Allingham (1854–1870), edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, were published in 1897.) Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland, his most ambitious, though not his most successful work, a narrative poem illustrative of Irish social questions, appeared in 1864. He also edited The Ballad Book for the Golden Treasury series in 1864, and Fifty Modern Poems in 1865.

In April 1870 Allingham retired from the customs service, moved to London and became sub-editor of Fraser’s Magazine, eventually becoming editor in succession to James Froude in June 1874, a post he would hold till 1879. On 22 August 1874 he married the illustrator, Helen Paterson, who was twenty-four years younger than he. His wife gave up her work as an illustrator and would become well known under her married name as a water-colour painter. At first the couple lived in London, at 12 Trafalgar Square, Chelsea, near Allingham’s friend, Thomas Carlyle, and it was there that they had their first two children: Gerald Carlyle (born 1875 November) and Eva Margaret (born 1877 February). In 1877 appeared Allingham’s Songs, Poems and Ballads. In 1881, after the death of Carlyle, the Allinghams moved to Sandhills near Witley in Surrey, where their third child, Henry William, was born in 1882. At this period Allingham published Evil May Day (1883), Blackberries (1884) and Irish Songs and Poems (1887).

In 1888, because of William’s declining health, they moved back to the capital, to the heights of Hampstead village. But in 1889, on 18 November, William died at Hampstead. According to his wishes he was cremated. His ashes are interred at St. Anne’s church in his native Ballyshannon.

Posthumously Allingham’s Varieties in Prose was published in 1893. William Allingham A Diary, edited by Mrs Helen Allingham and D. Radford, was published in 1907. It contains Allingham’s reminiscences of Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle and other writers and artists.