Harris Merton Lyon
Harris Merton Lyon (1882–1916) was an American short story writer.
Biography[]
Harris Merton Lyon was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1882.[1] He attended the University of Missouri while working at a restaurant and laundrette.[1] By the early 1900s, he moved to New York City to work as a journalist and as a short story writer.[1] His stories were published in , edited by Theodore Dreiser, and later in McClure's, Collier's, The Smart Set,[1] and .[2][3] In 1908, he published his first collection of short stories, Sardonics, followed by Graphics in 1913.[1]
A newspaper from February 1908 reproduced a photo of a 17-year-old Japanese woman named Hyacinth Tawana, who the caption said was coming to America to marry Lyon. The caption stated Lyon "had rescued his bride-to-be from a very perilous situation in Japan, and the romance followed."[4]
In 1913, he moved to a farm in Colebrook, Connecticut and started writing a series of anonymous letters for Reedy's Mirror.[5] He died of Bright's disease three years later.[1]
Theodore Dreiser wrote a portrait based on Lyon in .[1] Dreiser nicknamed him 'Maupassant, Jr'.[6][7]
Bibliography[]
- Sardonics (1908)
- Graphics (1913)
References[]
- ^ a b c d e f g Robert Coltrane, 'LYON, HARRIS MERTON', in A Theodore Dreiser encyclopedia, Keith Newlin (ed.), Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, p. 239 [1]
- ^ Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien, The Best American Short Stories ... and the Yearbook of the American Short Story, Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1916, p. vii [2]
- ^ Edward J. O'Brien, The Best Short Stories of 1915, , 2008, p. 155 [3]
- ^ "Photo Caption, page 6". Bedford Democrat [Bedford, Virginia]. February 27, 1908.
- ^ Max J. Puzel, The Man in the Mirror: William Marion Reedy and His Magazine, University of Missouri Press, 1998, pp. 256-259 [4]
- ^ Missouri Historical Society, The bulletin - Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1969, v. 26, p. 77 [5]
- ^ Jeremy Loving, The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2005, p. 186 [6]
- 1882 births
- 1916 deaths
- 20th-century American short story writers
- People from Colebrook, Connecticut
- University of Missouri alumni
- Writers from New York City
- Writers from Santa Fe, New Mexico
- Deaths from nephritis
- American male short story writers
- Writers from Connecticut
- 20th-century American male writers
- American short story writer stubs