Harry Leon Wilson (May 1, 1867 – June 28, 1939) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels Ruggles of Red Gap and Merton of the Movies.

[4] Wilson left home at 16 and worked for the Union Pacific Railroad as a stenographer in Topeka, Kansas, Omaha, Nebraska, Denver, Colorado, and eventually he came to California in 1887.

[8] Wilson returned from Europe and settled permanently into the Bohemian colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in 1910, which included Jack London, Mary Hunter Austin, George Sterling, Upton Sinclair, Xavier Martinez, Ambrose Bierce, Alice MacGowan, Sinclair Lewis, Francis McComas, and Arnold Genthe.

[9] In 1914, someone attempted to murder Alice MacGowan by poison and to steal her diamonds and cash; Wilson and writer Jimmy Hopper became amateur detectives, but the perpetrator was never discovered.

[3] In March 1922, Wilson fought and lost a highly publicized "duel of fists" with landscape painter Theodore Morrow Criley.

[11][12][13] It was revealed that their argument originated with "a light romantic" love scene between Criley and Wilson's wife in the 1921 production of Pomander Walk at Carmel's Forest Theatre.

[10] Wilson sent Criley a series of accusatory letters, including a 24-page invective, and demanded satisfaction in this "affair of honor".

He spent three months in Honolulu undergoing physical training and instruction in boxing, then he returned and the two men met on "a high cliff overlooking the sea".

[14][15] In 1925, Wilson built a two-story commercial building for Helen, who ran a flower shop called the Bloomin' Basement.