Leonard Merrick (21 February 1864[1] – 7 August 1939) was an English novelist.[2] Although largely forgotten today, he was widely admired by his peers; J. M. Barrie called Merrick the "novelist's novelist."
Life and work
He was born as Leonard Miller in Belsize Park, London, of Jewish parentage.[3] After schooling at Brighton College, he studied to be a solicitor in Brighton and studied law at Heidelberg, but he was forced to travel to South Africa at the age of eighteen after his father suffered a serious financial loss.[3] There he worked as an overseer in the Kimberley diamond mine[3] and in a solicitor's office.[4] After surviving a near-fatal case of "camp fever,"[5][6] he returned to London in the late 1880s and worked as an actor and actor-manager[4] under the stage name of Leonard Merrick.[5] He legally changed his name to Leonard Merrick in 1892.[3] He later worked his experiences in South Africa and in the theatre into numerous works of fiction.[7][8] Merrick's novels include Mr Bazalgette's Agent (1888), a detective story; Violet Moses (1891), about a Jewish financier and his troubled wife; The Worldlings (1900), a psychological investigation of a crime; Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1903), the tale of a disillusioned man who, at thirty-seven, sets out to pick up the romantic threads of his younger life, which is "judged his most successful work" according to John Sutherland;[3]George Orwell thought that this is because it is one of the few of his books which is not set against a background of poverty.[9]
Merrick was well regarded by other writers of his era. In 1918 fifteen writers, including famous authors such as H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, G. K. Chesterton and William Dean Howells, collaborated with publisher E. P. Dutton to issue The Works of Leonard Merrick in fifteen volumes, which were published between 1918 and 1922. Each volume in the series was selected and prefaced by one of the writers.[10] In 2009, a biography was published titled Leonard Merrick: A Forgotten Novelist's Novelist by William Baker and Jeannettes Robert Shumaker, the first comprehensive treatment of Merrick.[11][12] The title is taken in part from a quote by J. M. Barrie who called Merrick a "novelist's novelist."[10] William Dean Howells wrote of Merrick "I can think of no recent fictionist of his nation who can quite match with Mr. Merrick in that excellence [of "shapeliness" or form in the novel]. This will seem great praise, possibly too great, to the few who have a sense of such excellence; but it will probably be without real meaning to most, though our public might well enjoy form if it could once be made to imagine it."[10]
George Orwell, while describing Merrick as a "good bad writer", rather than a strictly good writer, admitted to a great admiration for his work; he particularly praised Cynthia (which was also a favourite of Chesterton's), the story of a struggling writer and his wife, and The Position of Peggy Harper, with its portrayal of the unromantic side of provincial theatre. In Orwell's view, nobody conveyed better than Merrick how dreary and dispiriting an actor's life can be.[9]Graham Greene, another admirer, had recruited Orwell to write an introduction to any work by Merrick while Greene was publisher for Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1944. Orwell offered to write one for The Position of Peggy Harper, but it wasn't meant to be.[13]
At least eleven of Merrick's stories have been adapted to screen, most in the 1920s, including Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920) directed by William C. deMille. Later adaptions include a 1931 film The Magnificent Lie based on the story "Laurels and the Lady", and a 1952 TV episode called "Masquerade" for Lux Video Theatre based on the story "The Doll in the Pink Silk Dress".
Merrick died on 7 August 1939 at the age of 75, twelve days before the start of World War II; he was at a London nursing home.[14]
^"Merrick, Leonard". Who's Who: An Annual Biographical Dictionary, with which is Incorporated "Men and Women of the Time". Vol. 59. Adam and Charles Black. 1907. p. 1212.
^ abManly, John Matthews; Rickert, Edit (1921). Contemporary British Literature: Bibliographies and Study Outlines. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. p. 117-119.
^camp-fever .. obsolete term for typhus, although it can also mean any undiagnosed disease.
^As an example of Merrick's biographical African experiences, in his novel The Wordlings, a South-African mine overseer returns to England to make his fortune.
^Many of Merrick's works are about the stage which were influenced by his two years of work there as an actor and actor-manager. For example J. M. Barrie said, "The stage figures so prominently in the novels of Leonard Merrick that most of his readers have imagined that he must have had lengthy experience in the profession. Such is not the case, Hayden Church writes in a letter to the American press. He was an actor for only two years. He was born stage-struck, and, at the age of 20, got the famous Augustus Harris to give him a chance in an English touring or "road" company. He was almost dismissed by the manager in charge, but another member of the company put in a good word for the youth. This was none other than Arthur Collins, now manager of the Drury Lane theatre in London." (see Barrie, J. M. (August 1918). "Booming Leonard Merrick Into Literary Immortality". Current Opinion. 65 (2): 115-116.).
