Leonard Merrick

Leonard Merrick was an English novelist. Although virtually forgotten now, Merrick was highly regarded by his colleagues; J. M. Barrie dubbed him the "novelist's novelist." Leonard Miller was born in Belsize Park, London, to Jewish parents. After attending Brighton College, he studied to be a solicitor at Brighton and law in Heidelberg, but he was obliged to fly to South Africa at the age of eighteen due to his father's serious financial loss. He worked as an overseer at the Kimberley diamond...See more

Leonard Merrick was an English novelist. Although virtually forgotten now, Merrick was highly regarded by his colleagues; J. M. Barrie dubbed him the "novelist's novelist." Leonard Miller was born in Belsize Park, London, to Jewish parents. After attending Brighton College, he studied to be a solicitor at Brighton and law in Heidelberg, but he was obliged to fly to South Africa at the age of eighteen due to his father's serious financial loss. He worked as an overseer at the Kimberley diamond mine and in a solicitor's office. After surviving a near-fatal attack of "camp fever," he returned to London in the late 1880s, where he worked as an actor and manager under the stage name Leonard Merrick. Merrick was well recognized by other writers of his time. In 1918, fifteen writers, including well-known authors such as H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, G. K. Chesterton, and William Dean Howells, teamed with publisher E. P. Dutton to release The Works of Leonard Merrick in fifteen volumes, which were released between 1918 and 1922. Each volume in the series was picked and prefaced by one of the authors. In 2009, William Baker and Jeannettes Robert Shumaker published a biography titled Leonard Merrick: A Forgotten Novelist's Novelist. See less